Darius carefully placed the five talismans on the ground in a rough circle and backed away. He was not happy about having to use talismans, but he had no choice. He was not yet at the level that he could construct kekkais without them. Were he at a higher level of proficiency, he could have directly used them without a focus or if had already undergone the novo, the power of a staff should have been enough to construct them. As of now, he had to stick to the basics.

Talismans were something like one-time foci, basically a use and throw item with a preset effect. It was prevalent mainly in the far east due to their unique scripts and style of runes. Where the Western runes like the Greek, Nordic and others used brute force and power to get a job done, the Japanese and Chinese scrips went about it much more elegance and finesse. It may not be in the same class as regards to power, but they were far ahead as far as versatility was concerned. That is why paper could be used as base for talismans written or painted with these scripts. Any attempts to do it with the Western runes would either directly burn out the paper or become a volatile item capable of combusting spontaneously.

Darius had set the array in a small area just at the edge of the second barrier. He powered them with his magic via a control talisman in his hand and both he and Sirius watched as the circle began to glow. Even the edge of the barrier nearest to the kekkai began to glow and slowly started to come into the visible spectrum. Good! That meant the two of them were already beginning to affect one another.

Darius sent the next pulse of magic into the talisman in his hand and the circle expanded to become about a meter in diameter and part of it expanded beneath it into the protected region beyond the second barrier. The glow in both the barriers had further increased as more of the two of them came in close contact with the other. The part of the Quadra-elemental barrier above the circle rose in height by an inch or two, keeping the distance between the two barriers. With the third and final pulse, the kekkai suddenly shot up in the air and formed a six-foot-high cylindrical barrier. The elemental barrier was forced to rise accordingly. And low and behold, a doorway into the next stage, specially constructed for us.

It was a simple matter of using the repulsion between the two different elemental systems to create the gap in the wards. It was a unique line of thinking that Darius had come up with on his own, without reading about it in any books. He had even tested it out in his home and it had worked very well, just as it had done so here.

Both of them paused a bit after those rather heart-pounding moments and then calmly stepped through the deadly barrier to face the next one. This one was the most innocuous of the lot, appearing even less dangerous than the first. To Sirius, it looked just like a thin barrier made of opaque glass. The entire thing looked feeble and easily broken. Even Darius saw the same initially, a weak looking barrier which would break with a good application of some brute force. But his aura-reader capabilities showed him more than that, he saw the distinct aura of the lightning element. It was so highly concentrated, that it took him a few seconds to realize that the barrier was composed entirely of highly concentrated white lightning. There was no way his weak 5 element kekkai would be able to get then through something like this. Even if it didn’t collapse right during its construction, there was still a significant risk of doing so when they were partway through it. They would need a different way to get through this one.

This time Sirius stepped up to the plate. While most normal Purebloods couldn’t think outside the box to save their lives, Sirius had grown up with a very different mindset. Being Friends with pranksters like Jmes and Remus as well as a brilliant muggleborn like Lily had taught him much more than any other pure-blood. His first try was based on a simple property of electricity and lightning. He conjured a rubber block as tall as he was and cut it into a shape like a doorway. He then banished it into place, right into the wall of lightening. Darius had to admit it was rather ingenious of him. Neither of them were ward-breakers and using brute force here was out of question, so Sirius returned to the basics and was trying to use the basic non-conductive nature of rubber to negate the lightning field. It didn’t work out though, in less than a few seconds, the rubber had caught on fire from the intense heat and collapsed unto itself.

Sirius didn’t give up though, he next conjured half a doze iron rods of varying lengths and banished them into the barrier with the other end pierced into the ground. The effect was instantaneous, the region around the iron rods became significantly less opaque and quickly became almost translucent. The lightning was getting grounded due to the conduction by the rods and that area of the barrier had weakened accordingly. Sirius once again conjured a rubber passage but this time it managed to hold out well. Both of them made their way through and were finally directly in front of the cottage.

Which was actually curious, since he detected four obstacles from the outside. It took only a second for Darius to make out the reason. All the magical energy here was focused on one snake nailed to the door. Darius remembered that feature of the Gaunt cottage but hadn’t remembered it until now. The magic swirled around the snake and the door it was attached to. It was evident that it was some kind of guardian, and they would have to get past it to get inside the cottage. And Darius was pretty sure just what was required.

~Open~

The door silently swung open, though beside him Sirius was looking flabbergasted at him. He hadn’t caught Darius taking out the runic recorder which had recorded Harry’s Parseltongue speech, so he was under the impression that he had used Parseltongue. Darius clarified things soon enough but that just impressed Sirius even more. He was really surprised that a youngster like Darius, who was just 15yrs old, was able to come up with such ingenious artefacts. But more importantly, the duo were through the main traps. Now the only thing in their way were the curses on the actual ring itself.

Darius walked ahead and broke the floorboard in the center of the room. Both Sirius and he immediately noticed the beautiful box that sat underneath it. Darius summoned it out and held it in his hands. He had already checked it over for any magical aura and there was nothing suspicious about it. Darius believed that Voldemort expected anyone that got through his barriers would be able to break any curse he put on the box as well. So, he would make it as innocuous as possible so that the curse on the ring took hold when their guard was down and they put it on. Of course, foreknowledge of the trap makes it much easier to ignore the subtle ensnaring charms on the ring that would make any intruder wish to wear the ring. He quickly placed the entire box into his expanded pouch. The box was doing an excellent job of blocking any of the magical aura from leaking out and would be his best means to get the ring inside the castle undetected.

Sirius suddenly burst out laughing. He continued to do so for about a minute before he calmed down and turned to face Darius.

“Sorry for that, I just had to let it out somehow. Its just the situation here, while old snake-face is trying his best to get himself his body back, we are steadily eliminating all his anchors to life. And he doesn’t even know about it. After this ring is cleansed, all that remains is the snake and we are good.”

“That is indeed true, even I hadn’t anticipated getting to this point so quickly. Killing a person with a single Horcrux becomes a nightmarish task due to the difficulty in locating them and getting through their protections. And here we have to face a Dark Lord crazy enough to make seven. Luckily, we are getting rid of the Horcruxes at a good pace.”

“And may we take the last one out as soon as possible as well.”

“Now, it is time for us to leave the place, no point staying here any longer.”

The two of them easily made their way out of the wards easily and Sirius side-apparated Darius to Grimmauld place immediately after they were out of the wards.