home

search

Chapter 69 It’s Behind Me.

  Chapter 69 It’s Behind Me.

  Isaac hopped over a pile of melted metal fragments and once liquified flesh. “This is insane!” Isaac called back to Lenna as they continued their sprint down into the underground of Port Vespera. “How many soldiers have died already?! The Magistrate should have given up by now!”

  “They might no longer be on a quest of duty, but of vengeance!” Lenna called after him.

  Isaac finally reached the bottom of the circular staircase and found what looked almost like a dried out sewer. Lenna arrived and found her place at his side a moment later. “Did they just use the sewer design or is there something I’m missing?” He asked his wife.

  “Regardless of the reason for the current environment, we should keep going. If the Magistrate has fallen, then we need to capitalize on the opening he will have given us.” Lenna told him and started forwards.

  Isaac ran ahead of her and she fell in behind him once more. The tunnel had a gentle curve to it to prevent anyone from seeing the entire way from one end to the other, or maybe it just needed to bend around something and Isaac was reading too much into it. At one point, another tunnel connected to theirs and the duo stopped. “Which way do you think they went?” Isaac wondered aloud.

  Lenna looked around and took a deep inhale through her nose. “Do you smell that?” She asked him.

  Isaac did as she did and frowned. “No. What is it?”

  “Blood.” Lenna replied and took off her helmet to free her nose and ears. She closed her eyes and sniffed again. She walked a few steps down the new tunnel and then turned to the side. A few more sniffs and a few more steps later and she opened her eyes. “Here.” She said and pointed at a bloodied hand-shaped scuff mark. The blood had dried but still looked fresh. It looked like the dust of the tunnel had absorbed all of the moisture out of the blood which prevented it from becoming crumbly. “Based on the direction of the mark…” Lenna’s voice trailed off as she looked down the new tunnel.

  “Understood.” Isaac confirmed and headed off in that direction.

  It took the pair a few more minutes before they finally heard something. A cry of pain and a roar of raging anger. The new tunnel had also curved but, with how slight of a curve the tunnels had, they were soon able to see an ongoing battle.

  A guard tried to desperately hold off the Magistrate who was entirely missing his right arm. Even just his left arm seemed to be enough to pressure the guard though. The Magistrate’s pair of assistants were locked in mortal combat against a mage who was clearly running out of mana and the marquess. The marchioness was desperately yelling into a magical device for someone to come save them. The mage that was running out of mana looked like the marquess’s sister but Isaac and Lenna didn’t remember hearing anything about his sister being a mage.

  Stars of Doom impacted a shield that shimmered with reality magic at the last second. A rapier parried a shortsword only to be blocked by a shield. A divinely glowing longsword threatened to blow through a magically reinforced kite shield. The three duels and six duelists hadn’t even noticed when the marchioness vanished from the battlefield.

  Isaac didn’t want whatever reinforcements she was trying to call to show up so he went straight for the marchioness. He didn’t kill her but he did strangle her into unconsciousness. Lenna accidentally burned away Isaac’s shadows as she ignited herself and plunged her sword through the back of the guard that was keeping the Magistrate at bay. Once she realized that she was now visible, she nodded to the Magistrate and threw the guard off of her blade. “Sir Solomon.” Lenna greeted the man. “I think you may be retiring earlier than you thought.”

  The tense and massive old man sighed in relief and turned to help his men. “Thank-” His words were cut off as a teleportation spell brought someone new into the fray. A woman with platinum blonde hair and skin as pale as a ghost arrived in the nearly entirely dark tunnel. The Court Mage had arrived.

  —

  The only lights in the dark tunnel were a pair of torches that had been tossed to either side and a knight radiating flickering flames. “What?!” She demanded. “I was in the middle of… oh…” Her voice trailed off as she realized that the marchioness had been in a truly life or death situation before she was called. “I see.” She scanned the battlefield and watched as the marchioness seemed to fall out of midair and collapse onto the ground. “Command: Be Undone.” She ordered as her opening spell.

  —

  Isaac had just finished strangling the marchioness when the new woman arrived. He could feel the mana coming off of her so he knew that she needed to be his next target. Lenna seemed to have the same idea as she started sprinting towards the new arrival. There was only twenty five feet between them and if Lenna had known what spell the new arrival was going to open with, she would have just thrown her sword. Instead, she was a mere ten feet away when the woman’s spell finished activating.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The Magistrate was short on blood, mana, and stamina. So short in fact that he almost toppled as he turned to regard the new arrival. He was momentarily frozen in shock. He had known the Court Mage for some time. She was a bit strange, far too interested in her potions and experiments than actually doing her job, but he never thought that she would be willing to fight against the kingdom. Apparently he was not as good of a judge of character as he and many others had assumed.

  —

  The Court Mage had chosen the soldier that was currently engaged with her lord, the marquess, as her first target. Luckily for the soldier, his situational awareness was honed to a razor’s edge. He turned and brought his shield up just in time to block the incoming branch of annihilation. The disintegrate spell activated and his shield activated its own reality magic as a defensive measure. The shield was easily overpowered but it bought the soldier enough time to let go of the shield and try to yank his hand away. He was still a bit too slow. The shield as well as the soldier’s arm, from just below his elbow to the tips of his fingers, was entirely gone in a blink.

  The marquess didn’t waste his opportunity to stab at the soldier’s open face. The marquess’s rapier skipped off the soldier’s steel helmet but still managed to find his eye. The tip of the rapier passed cleanly through the soldier’s eye from the outermost edge of his eye socket the entire way to the bridge of his nose. The steel nose guard caught the tip of the rapier and forced it out and away from the soldier’s face but the damage had already been done. In only a breath, one of the magistrate’s prized assistants had lost an eye and an arm.

  The Court Mage tsked and took a step to teleport away from the charging flaming knight that was headed her way. She had clearly been hoping for a clean and quick kill but that had failed. Her target was definitely out of commission though so she took that as an acceptable outcome. No sooner had she arrived at her new location, and turned to face the flaming knight, was she met with an airborne blazing sword. The knight had wasted no time in switching to a plan of instant lethality via projectile longsword. The first button on the Court Mage’s robes glowed and a Reality Shield stopped the incoming attack cold, a mere three inches from her face. She was about to start a counter attack when her entire body locked up.

  ‘It’s behind me.’ She thought in a state of pure prey instinct driven panic. It felt as though a pit to the hells had opened up behind her, changed its shape to that of a lion’s maw, rose up, and was now poised to swallow her whole. She was locked into a state of pure terror as an absolutely massive wave of death flames engulfed her entire being.

  —

  Isaac appeared behind the Court Mage with a devilish grin on his face. “You left yourself open.” He purred and hit her with everything he had in a display of power that rattled the mana in the area like a ground tremor did chandeliers.

  The marquess’s sister looked down at her magic bracelet as the death flame wave was revealed behind the court mage. “I’M GONNA DIE!” She yelled at the bracelet and it activated. In a blink, she was whisked away to wherever the bracelet had been designed to take her.

  The marquess could only look on in horror as his court mage was swallowed by death itself.

  Lenna rushed over to the fallen soldier and quickly dumped a healing potion over his missing arm. His armor wouldn’t let her try to tie off the stump so her only option was to heal it closed. She immediately got to work. She trusted Isaac to handle the rest.

  The Magistrate dropped to his knees as the long battle and his injuries, combined with the absolutely oppressive feeling of looking at the underworld side of a graveyard, had simply been too much for him.

  —

  The Court Mage’s entire front began glowing as a dozen reality shields tried their best to fight off the smothering amount of power that was bearing down on her. The first blaze of pain, that came from her feet being disintegrated out from under her, caused her mind to snap back just enough to have one more thought before she died: ‘I should have ignored her.’ Truly, letting the marchioness fend for herself would have been a better option.

  —

  What the Court Mage didn’t know was that Isaac wanted real information out of her before he let the underworld have her. He could have gotten some information out of her once she was dead but he didn’t just want to know where she came from but who she had contact with. He switched all of his death flames to pure dark mana as soon as the woman’s knees were gone. At first he was just going to obliterate her but when he realized that she hadn’t instantly died he had changed his mind. She had almost instantly passed out from shock though so Isaac would take that as a win.

  “Lenna, Magistrate, if we can keep this one from dying, then we can question her later.” Isaac called out. He turned to see Lenna shake her head as she was too focused on trying to seal the soldier’s gushing arm. The Magistrate looked like he was entirely spent. The Marquess had finally noticed his unconscious wife and had pulled a healing potion out of somewhere and looked like he was about to force it down her throat. “Perfect.” Isaac purred and then appeared next to the marquess and quickly stole away the potion.

  “What? Hey! My wife!” The marquess roared after Isaac but the dark mage was already gone.

  With another teleport, Isaac had appeared next to the Court Mage. He dumped a third of the potion over each of her leg stumps. It only took a moment for his eyes to go wide as the legs were almost instantly grown over with fresh tissue. “What kind of potion is this?” Isaac wondered. He dumped the rest of it into the woman’s mouth and she unconsciously swallowed it down.

  Isaac rose to his feet and eyed the battlefield. Lenna was still kneeling over the wounded soldier. The other soldier went to see the Magistrate who looked on the verge of passing out. The marquess was kneeling over his wife and looked like he was desperately trying to find something in her purse. He himself was standing over the Court Mage who was somehow still breathing. He really had no idea how she was breathing after the shock and bout of blood loss that had ensued after her sudden loss of legs. There was blood everywhere but he suddenly found that he didn’t really have anything to do but wait for the situation to settle. He couldn’t help Lenna, the Magistrate needed a moment to catch his breath, and he wasn’t sure if he had accidentally killed the marchioness or not so he wasn’t about to try and have a conversation with the marquess.

  Isaac summoned Shamesh but hid him entirely within his shadows as he arrived. ‘Yes, my Lord?’ Shamesh questioned.

  ‘I would like my throne.’ Isaac told his retainer.

  Shamesh actually eyed him for a moment as he mentally processed the request. His gaze panned over the former battlefield and then he looked back at his master. ‘If you are sure.’ He sent Isaac with a confused feeling attached. ‘A chest for my treasures, a place for my pleasantries, a box for my curios, a capsule for my memories.’ Shamesh chanted and then a moment later, a black obsidian throne was placed on the ground next to Isaac.

  ‘Thank you.’ Isaac sent his retainer and settled into his throne to wait. It had taken long enough but he finally had a reason to use his throne.

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler

Recommended Popular Novels