Chapter 52 King of Millennium.

  Hot. That was the one word that Lenna had to describe the ash cloud that had smashed into and over her. Escape was never an option, she had been too far to get around him, too close to run away, and his swords had been in the way so she couldn’t have just punched him in the teeth. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see, and her armor was getting so hot that it was starting to give off its own light, well, her faceplate was starting to glow anyway. She had no idea about the rest of it.

  Lenna could only weather the storm as her boots threatened to slide across the onyx ground. It was rough cut which was why she had any purchase at all while the battle had been going on but now she was struggling just to stay in place. The ash and cinder cloud completely blocked off her vision as her lenses, thankfully, kept the ash from flying directly into her eyes. Her faceplate was less helpful however and her face was covered in ash in a gradient that started at ‘Total’ on her chin and ended at ‘Lightly Dusted’ on her eyebrows.

  Everything hurt. Her underarmor felt like it was about to combust, in fact, it should have combusted a few hundred degrees ago. Lenna felt her skin join the ash all around her as Isaac’s death flames put her back together faster than she could be burned away. She was resistant to heat and fire but she was not immune to a heat so hot that it was trying to melt her armor. ‘Melting armor… shit!’ Lenna thought just before her Bottomless Backpack exploded.

  Bottomless Bags, Backpacks, and other such things were naturally reinforced during the creation process. A mixture of alchemical agents and all of the gold that ended up being used throughout the medium tended to aid in its resilience to a point where unless it was specifically hit with something substantial, the Bottomless item would usually be more or less fine in combat. Few people even purposefully attacked the items as no one knew what was inside of someone else’s Bottomless item and there were plenty of stories of madmen who packed one full of blasting jelly just because they could. One of those madmen being the demigod of Battle. He also kept plenty of healing potions just in case any of his battlebrothers needed healing but if someone was so much of an asshole that they would target the medicine bag, well, Battle was more than willing to blow both of them the hells and back. Lenna’s Bottomless Backpack was, in fact, not rated for one thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

  All of Shamesh’s clothes, Isaac and Lenna’s normal travel gear, spare clothes, repair powder, warming stones, over a dozen cheap potions of healing, magical stones that were always warm to the touch, the slate for contacting the dragonslayers, Lenna’s spare mana stone, the Ocean in a Bottle, twenty days worth of food and water, Isaac’s Compass that always pointed towards ‘civilization’, Isaac’s magic lantern, and almost every map the pair owned were suddenly exposed to the rapidly cooling but still obscenely hot ash. All of the fabric burst into flames, the liquids all boiled and their containers burst, even the Ocean in a Bottle, and the magic items were all stuck in the middle of it all. Lenna could only hope that Isaac’s lantern and compass were fine. Those were the only two things inside of her Bottomless Bag that could not be replaced. The lack of an Ocean in a Bottle was going to hit hard in the coming minutes however.

  Lenna didn’t have time to worry about the items she had lost or the ones that she hoped would be alright, King Millen’s spell had finished and it was time for her to move. Her Armor of Ire had prevented most of the ash from clinging to her armor but her boots were still solidly buried in it. Speaking of her boots, they had shrunk. The heat had caused them to shrink so much that they would need to be cut off of her. The leather had not been up to the task, not that she could blame it, of maintaining its integrity against the volcanic temperatures.

  Lenna reached up and tried to brush the ash away from her lenses so she could see only to have them pop out and hit her cheeks. The softly glowing lenses seared into her skin as Isaac’s death flames did everything they could to keep Lenna conscious and in one piece. Lenna could see the molten adhesive as it started to slowly melt down the inside of her helmet. The outside was bright, far too bright for her to be able to see. All she could do was swear silently for a long moment until she caught the movement of a silhouette. Her sword still burned in her right hand and her Armor of Ire was still active. She was a torch in the midday sun, but a torch nonetheless. None of that was how King Millen had oriented on her though, he was blind after all, but her aura was a beacon that had yet to be extinguished.

  “How?” King Millen couldn’t help but ask. He had never heard of a mortal surviving the directed cataclysm that he had just unleashed. His icy aura rapidly cooled the ash around him which caused it to harden back into brittle rock-like layers. “Mortals cannot survive Gia’s wrath, not even just the evidence of it.”

  Lenna let out a long slow breath to get the ash out of the way. She had to close her eyes to keep from getting ash in them but it didn’t matter. She could feel his presence in her aura and that was good enough. They were both screwed in their own ways. He had to be out of tricks and out of mana and her boots were locked in palace while her entire body tried to burn away under the heat of her own armor and the ash all around them. Thankfully for her, Malcolm’s aura was helping to cool her down.

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  “Ah, yes, you cannot speak while the ash is in the way.” Malcolm thought aloud. “I do not feel your comrades, perhaps that means it is just you and me remaining, though I still feel the dark one’s power clinging to you…” Malcolm was suddenly aware that Isaac was remotely directing the death flames to maintain Lenna. The fact that she was still on her feet despite how much pain she had to be in momentarily awestruck the old lich king. “You… I will remember your name, Lady Lenna V’Nova, the Lady of Hellfire. Your resolve and willpower necessary to power through the pain you must be fee-” He cut himself off as he heard the ash crumble and break as Lenna forced her boot up out of the thick layer of ash.

  “By my right, as the Lady forged, reforged, and tempered ninefold beyond that, I cannot be stopped by fire and ash alone.” Lenna spoke calmly though the mental strain she was under was obvious in her voice. She picked her second flaming boot up and planted it on top of the field of ash. “King Malcolm Millen, you can lay down and die as you should have over a millennium ago, or I can forcefully send you into that ‘good night’ myself.”

  King Malcolm’s Flight, Quicken, Frozen Aura, and Reality Armor all ended at the exact same time. He had been too preoccupied with Lenna to realize that he had run out of time. His boots landed on the hard ash in front of Lenna and he was left with only a few pieces of enchanted iron armor remaining. Enchantments that had all already been spent. “I am a king, the true King of Millennium, and I will not bow, I will not bend, and I will hold my head high until there is nothing left to hold it aloft. That is my duty as a king and one that I intend to see through to the end.”

  “Very well then.” Lenna spoke. “Prepare yourself, King of Millennium.” Lenna charged, she couldn’t see so she was just hoping that her feet would find purchase on the ashen ground. One, two, three, four steps was all it took for her to reach him and she stabbed forwards with everything she had. Despite Shamesh’s Quicken having gone out while she was weathering the ashen cloud, and Isaac’s death flames being consumed to keep her alive and in one piece, Lenna was still far stronger and faster than King Millen. The lich king’s hand was covered in lightning as he lunged into her attack with one of his own. Lenna couldn’t see it coming but that hardly mattered as both attacks made contact almost at the same time.

  The tip of Lenna’s sword impaled Malcolm’s right ribcage and bent itself nearly ninety degrees as it shattered the lich’s bones. The magic of Gilgamesh’s enchantment flared and Malcolm was instantly ignited. His Soul Stone, his ‘Phylactery’, the item that housed his very soul was assaulted by flames rivalling the smoldering remains of everything that had once been inside Lenna’s Bottomless Backpack. Immediately after, Malcolm’s hand impacted Lenna’s shoulder and sent a jolt of electricity directly into her armor. It raced along the heated metal and dispersed into even more heat before it could do any real damage, just like the lightning that had hit Lenna from the initial cast of the spell. Her under armor was not conductive but the ash below them was, at least to some extent. That fact had helped her weather the lightning portion of the volcanic ash storm but even if it hadn’t, the lightning was not likely to do more damage to her than the totality of the ash that Malcolm had blasted her with.

  Lenna’s shoulder slammed into Malcolm and they both went down hard. Lenna’s sword finished snapping in half as it repeatedly tried to ignite Malcolm who was now pinned between Lenna and hot ash. The ash was still noticeably colder since Malcolm’s cold aura had only recently gone out but it would only be a matter of time before the temperature of the ash once again nearly equalized. Lenna ignored the flames that repeatedly flared through and across the being beneath her and angled her sword so she could stab the broken blade directly into Malcolm’s Soul Stone. The lich flailed and tried to get her off of him. The pain for the undead king was unbearable and a scream of agony vibrated through mana itself as Gilgamesh’s flames pulsed again and again in an attempt to ignite Malcolm’s very soul.

  Lenna just kept trying to force the broken blade into the soul stone as the sword burned through well over a dozen of its charges, not that its charges really mattered with the condition of the blade. Both of Malcom’s hands were coated in lightning as he tried to grab onto Lenna’s helmet. His fingers latched on but the lightning just rolled down her armor and into him and the ground beneath them. It did nothing to help his imminent demise. Malcolm exploded and Lenna was launched into the air.

  Lenna was sent up and to her right a good half dozen feet before she even realized what had happened. By then her feet were pointing in the air and she was already plummeting back down to the ground. Lenna tried her best to get her feet back under her but the best she could do was one hand and one foot. She slammed into the ground and half rolled, half face planted into the ash. She picked herself back up, spitting and sputtering as more ash had found its way into her helmet. She forced herself to her feet and used her hands to shield her vision from the bright morning sky. She quickly saw Malcolm, nearly ten feet away, as he slowly forced himself back up into a standing position. Lenna once more charged at him.

  Malcolm’s right fist was coated in lightning as he tried to meet her charge head on. The same thing that had happened the first time happened again, only this time, Malcolm was truly out of mana. Lenna jammed her sword into his Soul Stone over and over again. Even if it didn’t kill him, Lenna could feel the waves of agony rolling off of him. The echoes of his pain rippled across the local mana and she could tell that he was in the worst pain that he had ever experienced. Maybe the pain of her blows would cause him to finally let go and pass on, or maybe the flames would eventually destabilize his Soul Stone and his soul would leak out. Once that happened, he was back within the reach of The Reaper.

  Eventually Lenna just ripped Malcolm’s ribcage apart and tore his Soul Stone out of his chest. She held it in her hand and turned towards Isaac. She could feel where he was through their shared Strand of Fate and she could tell that he was in one piece. Pushed to his absolute limit, but still in one piece. Lenna rose to her feet and slowly strode towards him. The hardening ash was nearly silent as she marched over it. She was tired in a way that only pain could cause, she could feel that her mind wanted nothing more than to go out like a candle in a tornado but Isaac’s death flames would not allow any part of her to fail. Lenna stopped as she nearly walked into an elf shaped statue made of the hardened ash.

  “It’s Shamesh!” Isaac called out to her. “Can you bring him with you?”

  Lenna just reached over and wrapped her arms around his midsection. With a mighty heave, her bundle came with her and she walked over to Isaac. “Here.” She told him, dropped Shamesh, took two more steps forwards, and then collapsed onto the ash dusted soil in front of him. Her consciousness would not fade but she had run out of willpower. Her aura flickered and the flames died out, her Armor of Ire was gone, and what was left of her sword looked like it was trying to figure out if it had enough power to momentarily light the entire world on fire from its place in the dirt.

  have made an attempt. In this chapter, I finally said the word Fahrenheit. I hate it. I could just remove the word, yes, but what I would really prefer was if there was just another name for it. Recently I have been turning over the name 'Living Temperature' since Fahrenheit is, at its core, how hot something feels to us, or at least to the man who made it. If you have any ideas, even if they are just used as inspiration, I would love to hear them. Thank you!

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler