Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 42 You, Don’t Deserve, To Touch Her.

“You could make a key out of shadows.” Lenna told Isaac. She was directing his anxiety towards something constructive as much as she was trying to actually find a way out of their current ‘mess’.

“Alright. Should I do that now or wait and see what happens.” Isaac asked quickly. He really wanted to be out of the cuffs. It wasn’t the cuffs themselves that were driving him crazy. It was the fact that he was stuck to the wall, in a locked cage. Isaac wasn’t a claustrophobic person but something about being tied down triggered his fight or flight response to a worse degree than actually fighting to the death.

“No.” Lenna replied and shook her head. “If my cuffs are antimagic that’s not a good sign. If you unlock it without the key it’s supposed to use, it'll probably set off an alarm somewhere.”

“Okay so what does… Did you say antimagic?!” Isaac exclaimed.

Lenna sighed and sat down against the wall. The chains were connected at shoulder height to the wall but were only long enough to reach a person’s knees. Lenna looked at her hands which were suspended at just below her shoulder height via the taught chain. “Yeah. They’re probably just being cautious.” She looked at Isaac’s unlit cuffs and tilted her head in thought.

“What?” Isaac asked, noticing her look.

“They don’t know you are a mage. You look like a skirmisher.” She told him after another second of thought.

“I guess somebody with magic is going to attack with that instead of swords most of the time… well you don’t, is that a paladin thing?” Isaac questioned.

“Yeah. Spellblades tend to rely on more buff spells than direct damage.” She explained. “I lost most of mine when I broke my oath.”

“So conjured key in case of emergency but even if I can do that it won’t be quick.” Isaac thought aloud.

“It’s fine. They’ll be more preoccupied with…” The door to the armory, the next room over, swung open. Lenna fell silent and stood up. This was the moment when they would learn if Isaac’s bad idea was going to work on not.

Three guards opened the gate and walked into the hall in between the cells. Isaac closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. One of the guards opened Lenna’s cell. He had a torch in one hand so they could see in the dark jail. ‘Wait! It hasn’t been long enough to get somebody important here yet!’ Isaac realized as the third guard entered Lenna’s cell.

“Ya sure this is a good idea? What if the magistrate shows up?” One of the guards told the other two.

Lenna’s neutral expression turned hard and she glared down at the guards. Only one of them was as tall as her and he was in full gear, she was not. The guards’ chainmail was covered in a fabric vest and tied with a thick leather belt. The vest was red on one half and white on the other with gold trim. On the back was a large hawk flying over a mountain range.

“Even if he does it’s just some drow whore. Nobody’ll care.” The guard to Lenna’s right cut in.

Isaac was already in cold sweats. When the guards started talking about everything they were going to do to Lenna his blood froze. The middle guard moved in front of Lenna and held his torch between them. Isaac wanted nothing more in that moment than to remove him from the world itself.

He felt a connection to the guard’s flickering shadow. He felt like he could reach through it and strangle him. Isaac reached for it both physically and magically. He felt some kind of resistance. He heard a slap and pushed with everything he had. Something broke. A shooting pain shot through Isaac’s chest as one of the mana pathways leading from his heart, his core, snapped from too much mana being poured through it.

His vision went dark and then he was there, standing behind the guard, he had already forgotten about the pain. Isaac reached forward and wrapped his hands around the man’s neck. His hands and half way up his forearms were covered in death flames that he hadn’t even consciously conjured.

He squeezed. His hands passed through the man’s flash with little resistance until he hit bone. The bone only held up for a split second before that too, disintegrated at his touch. Isaac turned his gaze to the left and saw one of the guards staring at Lenna with a look Isaac would never forget. The first guard’s head hit the ground, his body still standing, both guards looked at their companion in shock but only one of them got to move.

Isaac took a step towards his next target. Shadows poured from him in every direction and he planted his fist in the man’s face. His fist impacted the man’s face for but a short moment before it gave way. His knuckles plowed through gray matter that dusted on contact before it hit the back of the man’s skull. The guard fell.

The inside of the corpse’s skull got caught on Isaac’s wrist and hand before it too, quickly turned to foul smelling black dust. Two corpses lay on the ground as Isaac turned to face the last guard. Inside Isaac was nothing but cold fury. He felt nothing from the two deaths that stained his hands and he would not feel anything from the third either.

“Stay back!” The third guard yelled as he grabbed the torch from his fallen comrade’s hand. He swung the torch at Isaac and then moved it close to Lenna’s face. “If-If-If you don’t I’ll burn that pretty face of hers!” He threatened.

“I’ll just heal it.” Isaac said coldly and took a step forward. His shadows came back under control and fell upon him like the cloak he had used against the Ori-Masa. The torchlight flickered off his eyes.

Lenna backhanded the flaming torch sending sparks, ash, and flame into the guard’s face. He stumbled back a step, hitting the wall of the small cell. He coughed and waved some of the smoke away. He looked up to see Isaac three feet in front of him. The living shadow moved in total silence.

“I’ll kill you!” The guard yelled and tried to hit Isaac with the torch. Much to the guard’s shock Isaac caught it. His hand, covered in black, dripping, flames smothered the torch in an instant.

“You, don’t deserve, to touch her.” Isaac said coldly. He pushed as much of his mana as he could into his free hand. He felt the world start to spin from him running out of mana. He pressed his hand into the guard’s chest and focused on covering as much of him as possible in his death flames.

The third set of armor dropped to the ground. This one only had some brittle bones and a lot of black dust inside it. Isaac turned to face Lenna. His shadows were all gone, turned to flames and used on the final guard, his eyes were unfocused. “The key.” Lenna said calmly and pointed at the guard at her feet. Isaac noticed her cheek was glowing with a soft orange light that quickly dimmed and disappeared.

He bent down and grabbed the key off of the guard’s belt and handed it to her. He then stumbled back as he felt the world tilting in strange directions. He leaned against the bars opposite Lenna and closed his eyes. “They hurt you?” He asked her.

“It’s ironic, me being burned.” She replied while unlocking her cuffs.

Isaac’s chest hurt way too much to be healthy. He breathed in and out with slow deep breaths. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Nothing happened Isaac. I’m fine.” She told him as the second cuff fell from her wrist and hit the wall.

He nodded and focused inward. He was getting enough mana back that he figured he could spare some to heal his internal damage. That was the first area he had burned all those days ago while playing with his mana for the first time. The death mana gently flowed over and around the ruptured pathway and he felt it knit itself back together.

The world was still spinning and his stomach started to turn. Lenna put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?” She asked him while searching his face with her sharp silver eyes.

He opened his and whispered: “Yeah.”

“Mana fatigue?” Lenna guessed.

“Yes.” Isaac answered. “But why are you asking about me after what just almost happened?” He took another deep breath and she let him continue. “They almost… I wouldn’t have made it in time…”

“But they didn’t Isaac.” She assured him. “And you did.” She smiled, a rare sight that warmed Isaac to the core. “Besides, they wouldn’t have gotten very far. I do have one secret.”

“Oh?” Isaac asked with a raised eyebrow. It was getting hard to ignore the smell of decay and death that hung thick in the cell.

“My last spell. It covers my body in flames. I would have managed.” She said confidently.

Isaac thought for a second. She went to lower her hand and Isaac grabbed it without thinking. “How would you have kept from burning yourself?”

“I wouldn’t have.” She replied. Isaac’s eyes went wide. “You would have had to heal me.”

“What are you made of?” Isaac asked and shook his head without breaking eye contact.

She smirked at him. “Four thousand years of selective breeding. That and two hundred and fifty years of harsh training, to be one of the greatest warriors on the planet. The drow empire was built on mine and three other families’ shoulders.” She explained.

“You actually are just made of sterner stuff than I am.” Isaac said with a chuckle.

“Maybe… maybe not, but there are still things that keep me up at night.” She replied and looked away. “My kin are not known for their kindness.” She sighed deeply. “Is it wrong for me to be glad I only had to witness other’s suffering and was not subjected to it myself?” She asked and returned her gaze to his.

“No… No Lenna it is not.” He assured her. “I’m glad it was them instead of you too.”

Lenna took a deep breath and coughed. “Let’s get our gear.”

“Agreed.” Isaac replied and pushed off the wall. The world had finally stopped spinning enough for him to walk and he had to step over a corpse to leave. Lenna followed after him, never once looking back.