Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 43 Chocolate

“So, other than passing out and landing face first on the roof, did you get anything out of it?” Lenna questioned.

“I think I need to do it again.” Isaac told her and then dunked himself into the hot bathwater again. The hot water was doing wonders for the blood dried in his sinuses.

Lenna waited until he came back up for air to give him a deadpan look. “You need to pass out again?” She shot back incredulously.

“No.” Isaac replied. “I need to pull back before it gets that far.” He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling in thought. “The question is how. When I’m that deep in meditation there is so little of me left in there that trying to do something consciously seems impossible.” Lenna sighed as she thought of something. “What?” Isaac asked.

“If you meditate until you pass out again, I can time it and then keep you from meditating that long again in the future. Maybe pulling yourself out of the meditation due to an outside source will let you maintain that ‘awareness’ you talked about.” She explained.

Isaac visibly brightened and Lenna sighed in resignation. “That sounds like a spectacular idea.” He agreed. “Well, I’m not tired anymore so let’s-” He began while standing up in the tub.

“No.” Lenna cut him off. “Celeste is closing soon and no one is going to get any sleep if you are meditating.”

Isaac’s shoulders slumped. “Fine.” He conceded. “You’re right. I can wait until the morning.”

Lenna nodded. “Good.” She replied. “Now, you have two options.”

“Oh?” Isaac questioned.

“You can get dressed and we can get dinner before Celeste closes the kitchen.” Lenna told him. “Or you can skip dinner and the clothes.”

“What?” Isaac asked with genuine confusion for a moment before he noticed where her eyes were looking. Shadows covered him from head to toe in an instant. “I was not aware that Lady V’Nova was so lecherous.”

“Liar.” Lenna countered.

Isaac was too dumbstruck to reply for a long moment. “I’m getting dinner.” He eventually said to change topics. Even after spending nearly every waking and sleeping moment together for most of his memory’s worth of time, she still managed to blindside him from time to time. Though, in hindsight, he probably could have foreseen a similar response.

—

The day after Isaac’s spectacular faceplant, that luckily no one witnessed, the pair were back on Celeste’s roof and he was doing it again. Lenna kept track of how long it took Isaac to pass out and caught him once he did so. When Isaac groggily woke up he still had a nosebleed and a pounding headache. “Good to know it wasn’t the roof that made me suffer.” He groaned and washed death flames through himself to bring himself back to peak condition.

“Are you finished?” Lenna asked hopefully.

Isaac had experienced the exact same things he had the first time he had passed out. Now he was convinced that the awareness that his deep meditation had given him was something that he could replicate. There were just two main problems. The first was that Isaac had no idea how to enter such a state while fully conscious. The second was that he wasn’t sure that doing so wouldn’t just knock him out outright. “No.” He told Lenna. “Stop me before I pass out again, yeah?”

Lenna nodded. “Alright.” She agreed. “You are lucky I am more patient than you are.” She commented. “If our positions were switched you would be nose-deep in a book when I would pass out.”

Isaac recoiled slightly. “Hurtful.” He replied. “Probably deserved, but still hurtful.” Lenna rolled her eyes at him. Whenever she doubted if he was serious or not she defaulted to not. “I would still catch you though.”

“Oh?” Lenna asked. “How?”

“I would keep my brain boosted so I would have more perceived time to react and I would just teleport into position to catch you before you hit the ground.” He replied smugly.

Lenna sighed and shook her head. “I don’t want to give that to you.” She told him. “So start meditating already.”

Isaac laughed and sat cross-legged in front of her. “As you say, my Lady.” He said with a smirk and then closed his eyes.

“You can’t get the last word in and still meditate.” Lenna challenged him.

Isaac’s closed eye twitched. He had to give it to her, she had properly cornered him. “Fine, we’ll call it a draw then.” He offered.

“Fine.” Lenna agreed. “Now, let’s try to finish this before dinner. Celeste is going to kill us if we cut it as close as we did yesterday.”

Isaac nodded in agreement but didn’t otherwise respond. He settled in to meditate again and let the mana take him. A while later he felt Lenna grab his arm and start pulling him down. The sudden physical contact combined with the information his inner ear was sending him brought a spark of himself back to the forefront. Isaac latched onto the physical contact and his awareness and tried to bring them together, slowly. Lenna could tell that he was pulling out of the deep meditation by the slight dip in mana pouring through him so she let him continue.

It took Isaac a while but he eventually was capable of speech again while maintaining his grip on the information the darkness was feeding him. “I did it.” He whispered and then winced. “My head hurts.” He could feel everything around him within a few feet and it was already far too much. He soon realized the problem and tried to fix it with a concentrated effort of will. His resolution was way too high. He didn’t need to experience the tiny hairs on his legs or the individual stitches on his shirt from the perspective of the shadows. He slowly loosened his mental grip while expanding what he was mentally holding. Just like he wanted, his perception shifted but with it it brought a lance of pain into his head so powerful that he staggered and Lenna had to catch him. The flickering of firelight from something was moving the shadows around far too much.

“Isaac?” Lenna said with worry in her voice. ‘If my hair wasn’t already silver it would be by now.’ She internally swore at him.

“Yeah, hold on.” He replied and pulled his shadow perception back some more until it was only a mild strain on his mind. “There has to be a trick to this, I just haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Why don’t we sit down.” She offered and helped him sit. “What’s going on?”

“I can experience everything through the shadows but it’s far too much. It is radiating from me so I am mostly just experiencing myself from the inside and the out.” He explained.

“And you can’t tune any of it out?” Lenna questioned.

“No… but I might have an idea.” He said and Lenna gulped. Isaac and his ideas were becoming legendary with everyone he knew and no one knew them or him better than Lenna. Isaac pressed his hand on the ground and sent shadows across it in a thin line and then made a wide flat space a dozen feet away from him on the rooftop. He mentally pushed his awareness towards the flat area of shadows and it moved easily. Soon he was experiencing everything through his own senses and from the perspective of the circular shadow. “Woah…” He whispered.

“What did you do?” Lenna asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Isaac replied and then explained what he had just done. “This will be great for spying on people but I’m not sure what else.”

“When you leave shadows on me, would you be able to see through them?” Lenna questioned. “For that matter, can’t you just teleport through them back to me?”

Isaac just blinked at her a few times. “Did I ever tell you that you are a genius?” He asked her.

“Hmm,” Lenna tilted her head in thought. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, you are a freaking genius.” Isaac told her and then quickly summoned Kahtesh. He placed his hand on the little dragon’s forehead and pointed towards the clocktower. Kahtesh instantly knew what Isaac wanted and took off.

“What are you about to do?” Lenna questioned him.

“An experiment.” Isaac replied with a grin that spoke of recklessness and trouble.

Lenna sighed but before she could say anything Isaac took her hand and covered it in shadows. “This is a horrible idea.” Lenna told him. “Do you even properly understand the skill?”

“Nope.” Isaac replied and teleported away.

Lenna’s head snapped to the side and she watched as Isaac fell out of the air and landed on top of the flat roof of the clocktower. Kahtesh circled overhead but looked like he was ready to dive at a moment’s notice. She watched as Isaac closed his eyes and took a running leap off the top of the clocktower. Her eyes bulged and Kahtesh dove for him. No sooner had Isaac disappeared from sight behind another building did she hear and feel him launch into the air behind her. Lenna whirled around to see Isaac flying through the air at an odd angle that would take him off the edge of the building. His eyes snapped open and locked onto the space above and in front of Lenna. A moment later he appeared there and let his momentum take him upwards. Once his momentum had bled off completely he teleported back down to land in front of her.

“I’d say that wen- ow!” He was cut off by a swift gauntletted backhand to the shin. He looked back at Lenna’s face and was met by a very not amused scowl. “Kahtesh would have caught me.”

“Not after you teleported.” She shot back.

“Okay, that’s fair.” Isaac replied while rubbing his shin. The injury was already gone but the pain was fresh in his mind.

Lenna sighed and got to her feet. “Let’s go. You owe me chocolate for making me deal with your blatant disregard for your personal safety.”

Isaac let himself be drug along by Lenna’s grip on his wrist. “Yes ma’am.”