Chapter 346 A tainted life
It is damp, dark, and the excessive moisture creates a sense of heat, which is a very suitable living environment for snakes.
Della raised the magic wand. In the humid cave, the occasional drops of water flashed a dazzling light against the backdrop of the fluorescent light, and then fell with a drip, and the sound waves vibrated between the two quiet people.
Every time the ticking sound began to echo, Della's heart trembled along with it, slightly but quickly, and the next beat would catch up before the previous one had finished, finally making it difficult for Della to breathe.
"Are you nervous?" Cynthia heard Della's increasingly rapid breathing, and her movements did not slow down at all. "It's okay, you won't be nervous for long, it will be here soon."
"How about I satisfy all your requests, including Blake?" Della paused. She probably guessed that something bad was going to happen with Maggie, and her habitual avoidance of him finally prevailed. "Let's stop here."
"You are one of them," Cynthia dragged Della and led her forward without explanation, "one of the murderers who left me half dead. Do you think I will let you go?"
The thin Della was easily dragged away, her wand still in her hand, but looking at the glimmer of light in front of her, the glimmer of light that might be related to Maggie and her, her cowardice made this superb wizard become an ordinary person through and through, and she was dragged through the glimmer in panic.
The view immediately widened. This was a cave comparable to the size of a Hogwarts classroom. There was a small opening above the head through which the moonlight could shine in. The water vapor attached to the stone shone in the moonlight, adding a bit of brightness to the cave and making the small holes through which snakes could pass clearly visible.
"Do you remember how you removed the Unforgivable Curse?" Cynthia let go of Della's hand and walked into the concentrated moonlight.
Della's heart tightened when she heard this. She looked around the cave with her usually calm eyes, but she didn't see any remnants of the red spell.
She turned to look at Cynthia, her eyes filled with confusion and her face showed a sense of relief after surviving a disaster.
When Cynthia mentioned the unforgivable curse related to Quirrell, Della's fear changed direction. She was still afraid of Maggie's true face that she didn't know, and she was also afraid of Quirrell, who symbolized the turning point of her destiny. She was even more afraid that Maggie would have a face that she didn't know at this turning point.
Cynthia bent down and drew some patterns on the ground with her magic wand. "Move your hands, Della, and turn over the circle of soil against the wall."
Della looked at Cynthia who was no longer restraining her, and then at the black hole exit that was so close at hand. The escape and exploration in her heart began to fight. She stood stiffly for a while. Perhaps she still had some instinct for self-salvation. The exploration almost overwhelmed the escape, so she gave up the entrance to the darkness and obediently turned over the soil with her magic wand.
The soil surface was extremely soft and easy to turn over. Even for land that was moist all year round, it was too easy to turn over. There was not a single large clod of soil stuck together by water.
This place has been turned over a long time ago.
Della glanced at Cynthia who was bending over to draw, and her hands did not stop moving. Several long, hard lumps mixed with earthy gray appeared. She recognized them as snake bones at a glance.
There seemed to be something stuck to the snake bone. Della flicked her wand and pulled out a small piece of colorful snake skin. Almost as soon as it was pulled out, the snake skin had a beautiful color, which formed a sharp contrast with the rest of the body that had rotted away and only bones were left.
Something is very wrong...
Della used more magic power. Except for the center area where Cynthia drew a circle, the ground bulged. After the first crack appeared, tiny pieces of soil began to jump. In the gray haze, all the bones and snake skins were turned out.
Those colorful snake skins reflected a psychedelic and colorful glow in the moonlight, which could be called beautiful. However, a subtle but unignorable smell of blood filled the air, and the broken pieces of snake skin that were difficult to shape were inevitably stained with a dangerous color.
"What are these snake skins..." The method of using the Unforgivable Curse that Maggie provided to her was to draw it with the blood of a sacrifice. Della smelled the blood and turned to Cynthia with a stiff neck.
"The sacrifice is life, but it is not limited to the life of the person who makes a contract with you, right?" Cynthia straightened up. She looked at the spell taking shape under the wand with satisfaction and whispered Della's vague guess.
"I believe you must have learned more knowledge now," she looked coldly at the snake bones and skins of all sizes around her, lifted her skirt and walked aside, inviting Della, "Why don't you come and see for yourself how those snake skins were left behind."
Cynthia no longer showed her signature exaggerated smile, but the calmness and coldness behind that expressionless look were even more frightening. It meant that everything she did now was not a spur-of-the-moment decision, but something she had planned and even deduced many times, so she could show such a calmness that was inconsistent with her personality.
Della walked over, and after a few short steps, she seemed to lose consciousness, leaving only a body with knowledge walking forward. This body carefully looked at the spell diagram that was almost identical to the one she had drawn with her own blood, and found differences in the turns of several lines.
The scope of sacrifice expanded from individuals to populations.
The use of spell maps has changed from instant to storage.
The irreversibility of the spell has become a sacrifice of alienation.
A very clever change, Maggie's time was not wasted, the snake's attainments in the dark arts were far beyond her eleven-year-old self.
In order to break the Unforgivable Curse on her body, the snakes carved curse patterns with blood according to the species, and pushed each poor fellow to the center one by one, to see if they could have a chance to become the final product that could break the Unforgivable Curse.
The snake bones on the ground are from Maggie's sacrifice, and the colorful snake skin is the remnant of the failed sacrifice.
Della saw through Maggie's intention, but was too moved to think about it. She just waved her wand with trembling lips, and all the colorful snake skins floated up and surrounded her. As the world spun around, she checked whether there was any complete snake skin among them.
"Under your feet." Cynthia's voice floated in. A small crack appeared in front of Della's toes, and the complete body of the little snake floated in front of her. The snake skin was colorful and psychedelic, lifeless but not rotten, and a dark breath came to her face.
All the floating snake skins fell down with a bang in an instant.
Maggie found a way to break the curse, but it still made her kill people with her own hands, making her voluntarily take the first step to cut off from all normalcy.
Ignoring the dirty wet soil, Della slumped on the ground, wishing the curse diagram under her feet was drawn with blood so that it could take her life in one go.
Correctness, the correctness that she thought was linked to care, was actually a completely hypocritical correctness.
It was wrong, everything was wrong, wrong from the beginning.
How can he care about you or love you? From the beginning to the end, he is just creating people of the same kind to accompany him.
Taking this unnecessary killing as the starting point, looking forward, her numb childhood is the evidence, and looking backward, Maggie’s words and deeds are the evidence of the crime.
From the first time she met to now, turning over her life that she couldn't gaze at, the back was full of disgusting mold spots.
And the bad spots that tarnished her life constituted the dark light that comforted her.
Della's heart beat faster and she felt an indescribable nausea. She covered her mouth with her muddy hands, dry-heaved several times, and then vomited violently.
She had a bad appetite and vomited yellow bile two or three times, and then she couldn't vomit anything else.
The sour taste filled her nose and the bitterness washed over her mouth. One of Della's eyes turned blue and her temple swelled, but her brain became clearer than ever and she endured all the pain firmly.
Cynthia, who had come to her side at some point, squatted down, not caring about the vomit on the ground. She grabbed Della's neck, forcing her to look up. She met Della's blue-black eyes, which were slightly dilated due to the huge emotional impact. "One year."
She said coldly, not mentioning the absolutely certain matter of Sirius, "Even if you have to die, you have to live for a year before dying. This is not a favor, nor a request, but you owe it to me."
Della looked at Cynthia with lifeless eyes, her hands trembling uncontrollably, and she couldn't utter a word.
"You hate Maggie too, right?" Cynthia looked at Della's half-dead appearance and finally smiled. As she spoke, her tone changed again, "Although I actually doubt whether you can still have that kind of emotion towards him, you should take revenge on him, right?"
"I said harsh words to you when we first met, right? I said a meaningless fake life could be dealt with by a puppet," Cynthia's face moved closer to Della, her green eyes gleaming with pity and pleasure, "Now, do it once, and let me tell you how to take revenge."
After that, Cynthia stood up and glanced down at Della. The brief pity she had for her faded away, and she said lightly, "When you're done, you can go wherever you want to die."