He wasn't annoyed. Orion knew his son had limits, knew Regulus would never actually hurt him.
Besides, this was nothing. Regulus had once fired the Cruciatus Curse at him. Missed, and caught one himself instead.
Father-son roughhousing. Mostly for sport.
Nor was he shocked. Decades of life had exposed him to plenty of bizarre magic.
What he felt was something between this thing is a bit sinister and that's my boy.
"This spell..." Orion's voice came out thick. He cleared his throat. "Very unique."
He'd sensed the spell being cast because he was a wizard of considerable skill. But against lesser opponents, the ones with dull reflexes or thin combat experience, a blast like that from Regulus might leave them too weak to draw a wand.
No enemy in sight. No incantation heard. And already the body revolting, the brain swimming, balance dissolving.
By the time they realized they needed to defend, it would be over.
Orion looked at Regulus, his expression settling back to neutral, and gave a single nod.
"Impressive." He kept his tone as flat as he could manage. "Powerful magic."
Regulus watched him. The curve at the corner of his mouth climbed a fraction higher.
"Father, that was the lowest setting. I was being careful."
Orion's eyebrows rose. "The lowest?"
He replayed the sensation.
That first escalation, nausea stacked on vertigo, had already matched what he understood to be the ceiling of a Mandrake's effect on a skilled wizard.
A mature Mandrake, ripped from its pot and flung into a crowd, could flatten three to five adult wizards.
But only if they weren't prepared. With preparation, a Bubble-Head Charm settled the matter entirely.
That final stage, the one that had nearly shaken his skull apart, went well beyond anything a Mandrake could achieve.
And that was the lowest?
"What happens at full power?" Orion asked.
The smile on Regulus's face widened. "At full power, if you hadn't actively defended or prepared in advance, it would probably be lethal."
Orion was quiet for a moment, then gestured for him to continue.
Regulus began to explain.
Orion listened. His expression grew steadily more serious.
Even with everything he'd seen in his life, this spell was genuinely formidable.
Raw power aside, the only thing separating it from the Killing Curse was the Unblockable property.
But the Killing Curse's green flash could be spotted from half a mile away.
The Decomposition Curse's second form produced no light and no sound at the moment of casting. The target might die without ever knowing what hit them.
In terms of application, it arguably surpassed the Killing Curse in certain respects.
The Killing Curse worked only on a single living target. Back when the Unforgivable Curses were still widespread, some wizards had taken to strapping live rats across their bodies, just to intercept a stray Killing Curse from an unknown direction.
Regulus's spell was area-of-effect. Anything alive, regardless of number, caught within it would die.
Orion ran through every piece of Dark Magic he'd ever mastered or witnessed.
Precious few could stand beside this.
He raised his eyes to Regulus.
His son had sat down. Calm expression, clear gaze.
Not a trace of the exhilaration or wariness that should follow the creation of powerful Dark Magic.
Orion said nothing.
"Father." Regulus broke the silence.
Orion looked at him.
"I'd like to ask a favor."
Both eyebrows lifted.
Regulus asking for help. A first. He was curious.
"Go on."
"I'd like you to try learning it," Regulus said. "Help me test how difficult the spell is to acquire."
Orion blinked. Then he understood what Regulus was saying.
Test the learning difficulty.
A spell Regulus had developed himself, and now he wanted his father to learn it.
But he hadn't said teach or pass down. He'd said help me test.
Something in Orion's gaze softened.
This kind of magic, if Regulus chose, could easily become a guarded secret of the Black family.
Just like the inherited spells Orion had shown him, the ones only the Head of House and the heir were permitted to access.
Heritage.
Legacy.
The kind of thing passed down through generations.
But Regulus hadn't thought to hoard it. He'd simply said, plain as anything: I'll teach you.
Orion thought of Space Warp.
Regulus had done the same thing then. Barely finished developing it before walking into this very study and laying out the incantation syllables, the wand movements, the casting logic, all of it.
Orion hadn't said anything at the time, but he'd been moved.
Magic like that, in the hands of any other Pure-blood heir from any other family, would never be handed over so freely.
Not even to a birth father. Not even to family.
But Regulus just did it. And now, again.
Orion was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded.
Regulus straightened in his chair. "The conditions first."
"This spell isn't like Space Warp. Space Warp just requires understanding the principles, getting the incantation right, matching the wand movements, and practicing. The Decomposition Curse has a threshold you can't skip."
He went on. "You have to construct a magical model in your mind."
Orion nodded. He was familiar with the concept. Certain ancient magics demanded exactly that: building the spell's complexity inside your consciousness in advance, then calling it up at the moment of casting.
"This model..." Regulus looked up, his fingertip tracing shapes in the air. The Mandrake's magical model materialized quickly, grey-green, luminous but not harsh on the eyes.
"I spent nine days replicating the core magical structure of the Mandrake to build it."
He expanded the model from eight inches to a foot so Orion could see it clearly, then walked through the critical nodes and key parameters one by one.
Orion listened, eyes locked on the hovering construct, his expression growing more intent by the minute.
Building a magical model wasn't the hard part. Building one this alien, with precision demands this extreme, was.
It required an extraordinarily high level of magical control. But he could manage it.
Then Regulus said, "That's not the hardest part, though."
He met his father's eyes. "The hardest part is understanding decomposition."
"Decomposition?" Orion frowned.
"The Mandrake's decomposition..." Regulus paused, considered, then chose a different approach. He pointed at the mahogany desk between them. "This desk. Before the spell, it's a desk. After the spell, the wood is still wood, the nails still nails, the lacquer still lacquer. But they no longer form a desk as a whole. The definition of desk has been revoked."
Then he added, "Making the complete no longer complete."
Orion's brow creased. "That sounds like..."
"Philosophy," Regulus finished for him. "But it's something you have to understand when casting. The deeper the understanding, the smoother the model runs, the more powerful the spell. Without it, no matter how precisely you build the model, all you'll produce is ordinary magic."
He raised one hand, palm up, and held it there. Did nothing with it. Just left it open.
"When I cast just now, there was no killing intent in my mind. No malice. No emotion I needed to summon. Just one thought: let the structure of what exists loosen. Let order return to chaos."
Orion was silent for a long time.
It wasn't that he couldn't understand the words. Every sentence made sense on its surface.
But he couldn't picture it.
Turning that abstraction into operational magical logic required something in between, and too much of it was missing.
He looked at Regulus and slowly shook his head.
"I think I grasp what you're saying. But to turn it into something I can cast..."
Regulus read the expression on his father's face and understood.
That kind of abstract concept was a tall order for a traditional wizard.
The Pure-blood wizarding community Orion represented had been raised on standardized magical education from childhood.
Spell equals effect. Get the syllables right, match the wand motion, and the magic follows.
Spells that required emotion, you supplied the emotion. Spells that didn't, you followed the procedure.
Nobody ever needed to wrestle with making the complete no longer complete.
Regulus thought of his Muggle-born classmates.
Lily.
Would she find it easier to grasp?
But he kept the thought to himself. Some things didn't need saying.
---
Join my Patreon for early access to chapters: patreon.com/rivyura
Next Target 600PS