Chapter 51 Tephra Bronte!

  Lenna jumped and side kicked with everything she had. Malcolm had thought that he had forced her to choose an arm to lose but he had underestimated how much Lenna was able to do while still wearing her full suit of armor. Before Isaac had boosted her, jumping was more or less out of the picture. She could still do it but with the increased gravity from Quicken, doing so would be much harder. After Isaac had boosted her, well, her hips were at the height where her shoulders had been in a blink. Her side kick had turned her hips so the lich’s Swords of Oblivion just barely missed cutting her in two. The lich did not weather the impact with as much grace or durability as he would have liked.

  Malcolm was sent flying away from Lenna as her entire momentum was transferred to him through her boot against his chest. Malcolm’s armor broke apart from her boot and her armor groaned under the forces. His back slammed into a Reality Shield that Shamesh had raised to protect himself from the projectile lich. Malcolm’s rear armor finished breaking apart and Shamesh’s Reality Shield cracked from the impact. During the brief moment of disorientation, from his velocity changing faster than someone’s luck in a gambling den, Isaac appeared and stuffed the final platinum coin into Malcolm’s remaining eye. Malcolm exploded with a thunderous wave of force but it was too late. Isaac, Lenna, and Shamesh were all sent flying away from him but the damage had already been done. He was blind and was being jumped by three double platinum level adventurers with enough power between them to threaten most demigods on the planet.

  ‘Clark just informed me that the first undead are less than a minute out.’ Shamesh conveyed to Isaac. ‘There are four more coming but they should all be around one to three minutes apart.’

  ‘I know.’ Isaac replied. He could feel them. In fact, he had been passively keeping a figurative eye on them as they moved closer and closer with every passing exchange. They could already see two of the undead as they were inside of the crater with them.

  Shamesh was spent, he was about to lose the ability to maintain Lenna’s Quicken as his mana finally bottomed out. Lenna was down to around a quarter as she had been forced to use her mana to enhance her strength over and over again just to keep from getting carved into pieces, as well as the fact that she was maintaining Armor of Ire for the entire battle. The armor did little to protect her from the Blades of Oblivion but it did do some, it was still a few layers of mana between herself and whatever King Millen threw at her, not to mention it was making her more or less immune to the cold aura he was blasting out around him. Isaac was running on little more than his regeneration rate. He was hovering just under his regeneration rate when possible but the most that he could get out of it was enough for a singular shadow-step here and there.

  “I have not met heroes of your caliber for… a very long time.” King Malcolm spoke and summed two Reality Shields to cover both of the openings on his front and back. Sustaining them would steadily finish off his reserves but apparently he had a monologue to spout. “It is a shame you were not around when Millennium fell, maybe you could have stopped them.” The lich sighed, it was a very mortal gesture for a being made entirely of bones and an abomination of death magic. “Even if none of you survive this, I will retreat from the field of battle.”

  Lenna launched at Malcolm as fast as she could, she knew that she needed to end him before he got off some other crazy spell or the undead monstrosities arrived. Malcolm held both of his swords out in front of himself defensively. Apparently he could still hear her coming just fine. “Getting cocky in your imminent defeat?” Isaac prodded. He knew that Malcolm was up to something but he didn’t have the time and spare mana necessary to melt through the lich’s armor in order to end him. The best Isaac could do was help Lenna and hope that he would be able to help them avoid whatever bullshit the ancient king was about to pull out of his ass.

  Isaac grabbed onto everything within his domain that overlapped with Lenna. All of her shadows, the death flame boost, and the dark mana inside of her Armor of Ire, all of it, and yanked. Lenna dodged to the side at the same time and she shot around to the side of Malcolm faster than the undead king had expected, he swung towards her and backed up. He didn’t know if Isaac and Shamesh were still in the same place as his senses were almost completely crippled but he could hear Lenna and feel her aura as she moved. Lenna felt like a supreme predator circling her prey. The king knew that he would not be able to survive her unless he did something extreme, which was exactly what he was planning on doing.

  “Mightiest of all cataclysms,” Malcolm began and continued to retreat from Lenna as Isaac tried to help her get around his static block. Malcolm was not trying to counter but was merely making sure that his swords were between Lenna and himself. “full fury of Gia’s unbridled wrath,” He went on but then suddenly Lenna went entirely silent as Isaac’s boosting ability on himself completely stopped so he could both regenerate mana and silence her movements. Malcolm could still feel her aura but he now only had one way to sense her presence. If the undead king could sweat in nervousness, he would have. “come forth not thy fullest self but only the evidence and exhibition,” His chant was taking too long and he knew it. Malcolm was going to have to get really comfortable with the fact that he was going to get hit before he finished the chant. Especially now that he couldn’t feel Isaac at all. He could still faintly feel which general direction Shamesh was but that was not exactly comforting. He dropped his Blades of Oblivion. “Tephra Bronte!”

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  Isaac wasn’t sure what kind of spell the ancient king turned lich of a long lost kingdom was going to go out with. Everyone knew that the king was out of tricks after this last one. If he had anything left to give then he would have already. He was crippled, running low on mana, and if he had some other way to heal himself or teleport away then he would have. This was his last ditch effort to end the trio so he could leave to lick his wounds. What Isaac was not expecting was for a volcanic ash cloud to spew forth from Malcolm’s hands as he slammed the heels of his palms together. If it had just been a volcanic ash cloud, Isaac wouldn’t have been very worried about Lenna but it was not. The ash caused so much friction with itself that the entire area was almost instantly charged with static electricity that shot out and connected to anything and everything, especially Lenna’s and Isaac’s armor.

  Lenna was forced to weather the cataclysmic spell. All she could do was grit her teeth, hold her breath, cover her face, and pray that she could handle the extreme temperatures. She was incredibly resistant to heat in general but this was an actual pyroclastic geyser that had been pointed directly at her chest from ten feet away, and that wasn’t even taking into account the static discharges that she was a literal magnet to. Lenna was not the sole focus for long though as Malcolm swept the blast of volcanic ash and cinders back and forth across the battlefield before he spun in place. He had no idea where Isaac had gone so that was his best bet to deal with the dark mage.

  Isaac shadow-stepped as far backwards as he could multiple times. He could do nothing to help Lenna other than to convert all of the silencing shadows that he had given her into death flames in order to keep the volcanic ash from killing her. He knew that it would not be pleasant, maybe even comparable to her Perdition spell, but she would live, he was sure of that. Who he was not sure of whether or not they would survive was Shamesh. Unfortunately he did not have the time to send Shamesh home so it was up to the bone wizard to be strong enough to handle the heat and ash. At least Shamesh didn’t have any liquid inside of himself to boil off. Isaac wasn’t sure how he knew, but he knew that volcanic ash could potentially be hot enough to break down bones to their component minerals but it was more likely that it wouldn’t reach that temperature.

  Isaac was forced to shadow-step backwards again as the ash cloud nearly reached him. It was cooling fast but not nearly fast enough for him to willingly let it reach his knees. Isaac was struggling to keep everything that he had given Lenna active. His regeneration rate was completely equalized with how much he was giving her and his last shadow-step had been ten full feet shorter than he had wanted it to be. That alone let him know that he had hit rock bottom, even if the migraine and extreme wave of drowsiness hadn’t. He could still feel Shamesh taking the tiniest of slivers of his expend power in order to maintain himself which was a good thing. As long as he was still in one piece, they could recover.

  Isaac dropped to a knee. ‘If you can get to me, do it. I need to send you home.’ Isaac sent Shamesh through their link.

  ‘I’m coming, but the ash is hardening.’ Shamesh replied. ‘I can’t maintain Quicken any longer, let the mistress know I am truly sorry.’ He sent a moment later.

  ‘Alright, I will.’ Isaac assured his retainer.

  ‘Master… I am stuck. The ash has hardened around and inside of me.’ Shamesh was struggling to keep from having a full blown panic attack. Memories of when Isaac had been chained in a jail cell in Safeharbor, from even before Kahtesh had been a thing and when Kahtesh had been restrained by the mushroomancer came forth unbidden. He knew that his own panic, if allowed to flow up their link, could cause issues for Isaac so he did his best to clamp down on those feelings. His success was middling, but it was still successful.

  Isaac could feel how close Shamesh was to having a mental breakdown. He would be lying if he told anyone that he wouldn’t have been having the same problem if their positions were switched. Shamesh had inherited Isaac’s merinthophobia so if anyone knew how Shamesh felt in that moment, it was Isaac, even if they didn’t have a link that shared emotions even more than it shared words. ‘I’ll get you out, buddy, I promise, just try to relax. Imagine that you are in my shadow.’

  ‘I am completely free even if I cannot traverse your shadow.’ Shamesh replied. ‘This is literally the opposite of your shadow.’

  Isaac winced. He could feel Lenna’s condition and it wasn’t great but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been either. He felt her move and then he felt her collide with King Millen. He felt them both move a little before they stopped in place. His ring was shining which proved that she was in pain but he had no idea how much pain she was in. She was alive though and that was what mattered. All three of them had survived, and so had King Millen, but now the only one of them that was free was Isaac and all of his regeneration rate was being used to keep Shamesh and Lenna alive. “Shit.” Isaac swore under his breath. He saw the first of the undead reach the ash and it only made it a few steps in before it tripped and fell face first into the ash. It burst into flames but its body temperature helped cool the ash and it was soon half submerged in a solid ashen shell that didn’t even allow it to thrash as everything but its bones caught fire.