Third Room: Piping Pressure

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The sound of heavy stone dragging across a stone floor echoed in the vast room. It was the gritty sound one could hear when a stone pestle was ground against the grainy surface of the mortar, just louder.

Quinn stared at the material cube; it had just come out of the wall, turning white to show that it was this one's turn to be worked upon. He turned back away from the material cube, and on the opposite end of the room stood the entrance with the chasm sitting halfway across. He had finally reached the end of the challenging period of unending tribulations of repeated transmutation.

"With this," said Quinn, "I will be free."

He closed his eyes and unwrapped the memory of the object to be replicated that sat on the apparatus cube in the chasm. Ever since the objects had shown to have internal flaws, Quinn had ditched measuring through scaling equipment and turned to Earth sense to scan every inch of the object and save the information in his mind to be used during replication.

Quinn placed his hand on the material cube, and his closed eyes squeezed tighter with brows furrowing when he felt the coarse texture against his fingers and palm. Coarse material, in his experience, wasn't good when it came to replication — it was too grainy and had too many air pockets that needed to be worked around and eliminated to get a perfect replica.

'Definitely a product of alchemy,' thought Quinn as his magic trickled into the stone. The stone required exuberant amounts of magic to be turned from the stable to the flux state through which the magic of transmutation worked. There were naturally occurring rocks with similar properties, but the way the stone was structured screamed artificial to Quinn.

He pulled his hand back and came out, stuck to the inside of his hand was a viscous clay-like gelatinous blob — it was the transformative state that made the transformation of a substance possible. The viscous blob jiggled atop Quinn's hand as he walked towards the chasm. His every step was filled with a sense of anticipation — one more transformation, and this would be done, he thought. He held the blob in between both his hands as he jumped down and stepped down on the floor with a slow grace.

Quinn stood near the apparatus cube and stared at the blob in hand. He injected magic, and it shivered with minute spikes waving on the white surface. He felt volatile material fluctuating in his hands with a tenacity that fought against his magic, defying his will to change, trying to claw to its original state, resisting the change that was being imposed on it, but in the face of the force as large as the ocean to the rowboat that blob was, it couldn't resist the unconquerable wizardry.

Quinn pulled back his hands apart, leaving the blob to float in the air between the facing palms, trembling and spiking as it flattened into surfaces, curved into arches, and polished into the reflective surfaces while others donned matt qualities. He further concentrated, and tiny air pockets bubbled up inside the in-progress replica — they were irregular globs, defined squares, pointy polyhedrons, among many other things dotting the innards of the now ready to be compared replica.

"Everything has an ending," he said and placed the object that screamed randomness on the cylinder platform with dull clack of stone. He gulped as his eyes moved back and forth between the target of replication and his replica. Did he miss anything? Was there a pesky pocket air pocket inside that passed by his senses? Or was there something entirely different with the last material cube?

The answer was none of them.

Quinn felt a tremble pass beneath his feet. His ears picked up rumble, and his eyes went up towards the ceiling, and a crinkle of dust entered his mouth, causing him to spit out a conjured mouthful of water to clear out the dust.

"Yuck—"

Before the splashes of water off the floor could even settle down, the entire room began shaking violently.

"Oh, for magic's sake," Quinn stumbled backward, landing squarely on the floor, "not this again. Couldn't he have done things differently?!"

The material cubes began shifting out of the walls beside him and trading position right in front of his eyes. A cube just to his side rose above and flew into the sky like an elevator going straight up. A tremble stronger than before struck Quinn, and he found being raised into the air, the cube on which he had fallen had dislodged from the ground and was rising up.

After the initial surprise passed, Quinn watched with an incredulous stare or dazed look as dozens of cubes were floating in the air. A cacophony of flying cubes unravelled in front of his eyes, spiking his heartbeat up as cubes crossed by, missing each other by inches, even centimetres from serious collisions.

When things stopped moving and the shaking settled, Quinn finally got himself up and took in the changes that had unfolded in front of him. He was standing on an above-the-ground bridge constructed from a string of cubes going from one end of the room to the other end. Quinn stepped to the edge of the cube and stared down to find the chasm had vanished; in its place was a flat floor, one much deeper than the previous floor. He turned his head to the left and saw the room's entrance at the bridge's end. When he turned right, he found another new thing that interested him the most. It was another doorway opening in the way, one that hadn't been there before.

"The exit. . ."

The sound of his footsteps echoed through the empty room as he walked towards the new doorway. He stopped right in front of the dark doorway and stared deep into the dark tunnel with no end in sight, not knowing where the tunnel led to.

An orb of light swirled upon his palm as he raised his hand forward and faced it towards the tunnel. He curled his finger, sans the index, and touched the orb for it to gently float into the tunnel, with Quinn watching behind it sedately, his eyes darting everywhere the orb shed its light.

The tunnel finally opened into a room smaller than the second room but bigger than the first one, but like both before, it followed the same theme of drab and dull grey.

Quinn furrowed his brows as his eyes roamed across the room. It was too simple — the first had the center pedestal standing out, and the second had the chasm as an identifying piece, but this was a plain cubic room with no exceptional details. The only point of focus stood directly opposite to him in the form of a door. It was an actual door with a door pane and a handle, though just like everything, it was also entirely made from stone.

There was something wrong here, thought Quinn. He could feel it in his veins. The Architect's a bastard, said a silent voice in the back of his head.

He flicked his hand like throwing a ball up for a glowing-red Empyrean ball appearing spiral in the air before falling into his hand. Quinn narrowed his eyes and threw it like a skipping stone on a lake, and because of the property imbed into the Empyrean, the ball mimicked a skipping stone and skipped across to the other side of the room.

Nothing happened; the room remained as it was before. Would Quinn give up? No. Quinn started to throw objects made from Empyrean all over the room — at the floor, to the walls, over to the ceiling above. Once again, nothing happened.

Quinn put his hands to the side of his mouth and shouted. "I am going to dig your tomb and robe your grave!" His voice reverberated off the walls, but nothing came in return — no reply filled with vitriol, threatening spells, and/or collapsing walls.

"It seems he is indeed dead. Glad to have that cleared. Cool, now to the difficult part." He looked down on the floor and carefully put his leg a step forward. Nothing happened, so he moved his back leg forward, and yet again, nothing happened.

"Well, two rooms, and he hasn't thrown me into freezing ice, personality-altering curses, water shenanigans, or carnivorous plants," said Quinn. Maybe the Architect wasn't Hitler, he thought.

Screw it, he thought and started to walk normally. And on his third step, a pizza box-sized square in the floor sunk beneath his leg. Quinn looked down, and the first thought that entered his mind was — Pressure Plate. Did it not trigger because the Empyrean ball wasn't heavy enough? Did it work like a landmine? he thought.

Within the span of a single blink, something shot at him from the sunken plate. It collided against an invisible shield spell before it could head Quinn in the head. As the object lost its rising momentum and fell back, Quinn raised his hand and caught it out of the air.

Being careful about not shifting his weight on the pressure plate, Quinn observed the object in hand. It was like around the size of his fingers with the thickness of a pencil, perfectly cylinders with two flat sides on both ends. He tore his eye away from the ammunition for a second and looked at the floor, and as he expected, there was a circular hole in the floor, and if he was thinking right, the circular hole was the top part of a cylinder.

Quinn fiddled with the cylinder for a moment before pocketing it. He looked at the spot one step ahead and planted his back leg onto it, triggering yet another pressure plate while his other leg let off some weight of the previous pressure plate, making it rise.

This time, two cylinders were pelleted towards him. They slammed against the shield barrier and then floated down into his hands. Quinn pinched one of them between his index finger and thumb and brought it above to his face, and squinted at it. It was roughly the same thing as from the first tile. So did the other one.

He looked down at his feet and saw the two holes. He glanced at one of the cylinders and watched as it fell from his hand and landed on the floor. As it bounced off, the cylinder turned into a blob. Quinn's eyes narrowed. It was transmutation, he thought as the blob contacted the floor and disappeared; it was more like sunk into the stone floor, and in the same instant, a hole filled up.

Quinn licked his lips and stared at the sole remaining cylinder in his hand, cocked his arms, and threw it as far as he could. He kept his eye on the square tile beneath his feet, but his ears were peeled open. The second he heard the sound of the cylinder hitting the floor was the second he saw the second hole fill up.

But then the next second, two cylinders shot up at him again, and Quinn had to jerk his head back to miss them by a breadth of a hair. "Shit! It's on a loop!" he exclaimed, and his eyes widened as he heard two clatters.

His mind connected the newly acquired pieces of knowledge and pulled up a shield, and it had barely materialized when another two cylinders came colliding. Quinn watched the shield ripple mere inches away from his face and wondered about the possible double headshot he came close from suffering. The realization made him spring into action. The two cylinders in free fall suddenly came to an abrupt stop and flew spiralling into Quinn's hands, one in each hand, courtesy of summoning spell.

"Okay, okay," Quinn muttered choppily as he clenched his hands tightly around the cylinders. He shuffled his foot aside, just enough to create space for his other leg which he rested on the sunken tile. Both of his feet were now on the same tile.

"Don't panic," said Quinn to himself, "calm down and think. The solution, yes, it's easy." Quinn waved his hand, and a silver platform appeared in front of him, hovering off the ground. "If I'm not on the ground, I won't trigger a pressure plate. Yes, keep it simple," said Quinn and hopped onto the silver platform. He turned back and grinned to see no sunken tiles meaning no shooting projectiles coming for his head.

"Ye-ah," Quinn smirked, "stupid oldie trying to be smart. Didn't think of this one, eh, did you. Hmph, the Aquatic vault creator is better than you; at least he had the sense to disable brooms. Oh, wait, brooms weren't a thing for a primitive oldie like you, eh, Gragg—"

The smirk drained from Quinn's voice as he heard a familiar voice echo in the room. It was a sound he had so many times in the second room — the sound of when a material cube slid in and out of the wall, the gritting sound of stone against stone. His eyes honed onto the source, and he looked up towards the ceiling to see a square, the same size as the two pressure plate tiles he had stepped on, sunk up into the ceiling.

Something else is coming, he thought.

Thud!

Quinn had just enough time to turn and pull up a shield to see a baseball bat sized cylinder impact on his shield, sending waves of ripple flying across the surface. The hit was nowhere near powerful enough to dent his shield, but it was powerful enough to crack his bones if it hit.

The thought brought up fear in his mind. Fear was good, he thought as Occlumency began taking help, it would help.

The third room couldn't hear Quinn's thought, and neither did it care for his thought because as Quinn's eyes followed the baseball bat cylinder falling, another tile sunk up in the ceiling.

Quinn heard it and knew another one was coming.

Thud!

Another baseball bat crashed into the shield dome that Quinn had pulled up. Quinn's eye twitched. This second one was stronger than the first one.

Thud!

"What!" Quinn turned to see ripples and just caught a glance of the baseball bat sinking into the ground. Quinn's eyes widened as he recognized what had happened. The force of this baseball bat was lighter, which meant it was from the first ceiling tile. The conclusion: auto loop.

Thud!

Second ceiling tile, thought Quinn, judging from the impact.

He looked up and saw two sunken tiles, and then with his eyes on the ceiling, a third square tile sunk in.

Thud! Thud!

'Third tile. Two projectiles. Stronger than second tile projectile,' thought Quinn as two from third ceiling tile hit him and then immediately two combined from the first two ceiling tiles also made impacts, sending ripples that collided with other ripples, making more ripples on the shield's surface.

'Roughly two seconds,' he thought, 'there's a two-second gap before a new tiles sink in. Every tile remains sunk, meaning that the attacks will stack up with time.' His mind processed the facts he had, and another hypothesis was formed: 'The longer I stay off the ground, the more ceiling tiles would get activated.'

The ceiling tiles had begun sinking when he had stepped off the ground.

'So, if I step down, the ceiling tiles would deactivate,' he thought and then looked up. 'That's three seconds. Time for the fourth one.'

He looked up, and indeed a fourth ceiling tile sunk up.

'I should step down. It would be easier to stay in one spot on the groun—'

Bang!

It came out of a sudden. Quinn, who had been standing firm on the silver platform, was sent flying. As he flew, his body almost parallel to the floor, Quinn's eyes caught, for a brief second, through the rippling still entirely intact shield, what had hit him — the projectile was no longer baseball bat sized, but what he in the situation judged as Luna sized. The size and speed had enough momentum to send Quinn together with his shield — it was like a football being kicked — the ball wouldn't rupture, but it would go flying.

With whatever composure he could muster while being forcibly flung, Quinn cast Arresto Momentum to slow himself down. A blue light covered Quinn's entire body as he visibly slowed down and gyro-ed upright at the exact moment he contacted ground on his feet.

Quinn released a held breath. "That was sudden —."

His words died down in his throat, and he snapped his gaze down — he was standing on a sunken tile. The internal alarms blared, and the emergency message blasted to his body, but before it could act, spikes came out of the ground.

A painful howl pierced the room.

Quinn heaved and grunted in pain as his eyes trembled in and out of focus with the sight of stone spikes penetrating into his leg. From his ankle to his thigh, every part of his leg was pierced. Quinn grimaced as a spike scraped his bone.

He gritted his teeth and let the pain flow freely. It was helping his consciousness.

'Okay, don't take the s-spikes out,' Quinn thought. He had to keep the wounds closed. But he couldn't remain here stuck with the spikes; he needed to free himself.

'Remember the second floor tile,' he thought. He had the facts clear in his mind. His hand trembled as he made a shaky swing, and the tip of the spikes was lopped off the body of the spike a with smooth slice of transmutation.

'O-Okay,' Quinn breathed out shakily, and his half-lidded eyes moved up to the room's entrance. He had been thrown quite a distance away from the entrance.

Quinn closed his eyes, and he could hear his breathing.

He opened his eyes, and steel shone in the stone greys.

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Quinn West - MC - A thought passed in his mind: This is the norm.

FictionOnlyReader - Author - This is Conflict.

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The link is in the synopsis!