Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 52 Badly Thought Through

With the map from Alexander, Lenna guided them through the tunnels at a jog. Isaac was dedicating a large amount of his regeneration to keep them both entirely silent. Isaac threw Lenna a look that said: ‘We need to move faster.’ Lenna nodded an agreement and soon they were all but sprinting through the tunnels. Even running at high speed it still took them almost an hour to get to the other end of the tunnels. As they approached the end they had a decision to make. They could either break through a section of the wall into the large cavern and then sprint the massive distance to the fortress or try to sneak around behind the skeletons that were still in the tunnels and then sprint to the decrepit castle.

Lenna made the decision for them and charged up the last tunnel towards the weak point in the wall. “Impact.” She whispered just loud enough for Isaac to catch it. He threw shadows at the wall to deaden the thud of Lenna slamming to the stone. Her aura blazed across her body as she sprinted at the deadend. She took a page out of Isaac’s book and went straight from a sprint into a spinning back kick. Flames trailed behind her leg as she forced every ounce of strength she had into the strike. Her mana and aura surged and in a moment the wall had exploded out the other side.

Isaac moved in a blur. He teleported six times in rapid succession to catch the falling debris before it could smash into the ground below. As it was, the noise was only barely drowned out by the army of skeletons that was still trying to force itself into the tunnel. It appeared that the initial estimate of ten thousand was very far off. The skeletons hadn’t stopped coming. All of the stone debris was sent into his Inventory and he felt himself quickly double in weight. With his last teleport he was next to Lenna at the new gaping hole in the wall around fifty feet up from the shambling horde.

Isaac slammed into the ground as his awkward landing was magnified by his sudden mass increase. The wind was knocked from his lungs and he was left gasping for air. Lenna was next to him in an instant, all remnants of her flames were already long gone, and tried to help him sit up. “Did you get it all?” She asked worriedly.

Isaac started pulling chunks of stone out of his Inventory and quickly handed them to Lenna. Lenna took each one and set it down as gently as she could. He had to use the regeneration he had been using to silence them to boost his strength enough to breathe and not drop one of the stones. “I think so.” He told her. “Now, how do we get down?”

“We fly.” Lenna told him. “Kahtesh can take me past them.”

Isaac looked out of the hole towards the seemingly endless wave of steel and bones. “That’s not going to work.” He assured her. “This whole thing is way worse than we planned for.”

“Do you want to head back?” She questioned him. “We might need the Altian military if this keeps up.”

Isaac shook his head. “No. We need to end this before Safeharbor’s paltry defense forces get crushed under a hundred thousand skeletons.” He explained. “It’s now or we join the frontline and hope Safeharbor has enough time to evacuate before we are overrun.”

“Where did this threat even come from?” Lenna wondered aloud.

“It doesn’t matter.” Isaac replied. “I’ll get one of the clerics to ask a corpse after this is all over with.”

Lenna nodded. “Wait, did we just switch places?” She asked him.

Isaac narrowed his eyes on her. “I can be the one that stays on track once or twice.” He said almost defensively.

“I’m just saying, this is new for you.” Lenna commented.

“Kahtesh can take you to there.” Isaac said to get Lenna to drop the teasing. He pointed to an area along the side wall where there weren’t any skeletons. The area was out of the way enough that the skeletons had no reason to go over there.

“That will have to do.” Lenna agreed. “I hope Safeharbor is still there when we get back.”

“Do you think that the reason the army stopped trying to dive through your wall of fire was because they were still amassing or because they didn’t know how many mages there were to maintain it?” Isaac asked.

“There it is.” Lenna teased.

Isaac shook his head and summoned Kahtesh. He had Kahtesh get a thirty foot running start before he needed to grab Lenna. “Good luck with the landing.” Isaac told Lenna and the dragon. “I’ll try to catch you but no promises.”

Lenna nodded and moved ten feet back from the hole. “Ready.” She told her mate and by extension the dragon.

Isaac wove shadows through her armor and over Kahtesh’s claws before he gave a countdown. “On one.” He told them. “Three, two, one.” At ‘one’ Lenna and Kahtesh both started sprinting. By the time Lenna had reached the hole Kahtesh was only ten feet behind her. His incredible traction with his monstrously sharp claws on the stone meant that he was almost at full speed in an instant.

Lenna dove out of the hole and Kahtesh followed a split second later. The dragon caught her on her pauldrons and Lenna’s hands clamped around the dragon’s forearms. They managed to glide almost two hundred feet before they came to a tumbling halt. Isaac took the brunt of the impact for Kahtesh and his shadows enveloped Lenna to silence and soften her rolling landing.

“Can I just say that today is full of badly thought through plans.” Isaac groaned as he pushed Kahtesh off of him.

Lenna rose to her feet and turned to look at the horde of skeletons. Not a single one of them seemed to take notice of the pair. “I suddenly have a really bad feeling about this.” She told Isaac.

“Like they are ignoring us on purpose because of how much noise we’ve accidentally made or because of the dim flash of light from you breaking a stone wall with your foot?” He questioned.

“Both.” Lenna agreed. “This should officially be a failed plan.”

“To be fair, it wasn’t a very good one, it just seemed to be our only real option.” Isaac confirmed with a shrug.

Lenna shook her head. “No.” She countered. “You should have gone alone and then once you were at the castle, used the thing Alexander gave you so he could teleport both of us to you.”

“My second plan.” Isaac said with a frown. “This is the last time I let Alexander make the plan.”

“Half of it sounded good.” Lenna offered. “At least now the undead are focused on something instead of just milling about.”

“You don’t think we actually didn’t fail our stealth mission already?” Isaac wondered.

It was Lenna’s turn to shrug. “I wouldn’t bet on it but maybe we got lucky.”

“I think we both have very average luck.” Isaac commented. “It bounces back and forth so much between awful and amazing that it just kind of becomes average.”

“Bad luck because this is happening at all, good luck because we haven’t been swarmed yet?” Lenna questioned.

Isaac nodded with a frown. “Either way, I’m not taking any more risks than necessary between here and the controller of this army of the dead.”

“What about the frontline?” Lenna asked with a hint of worry. “If we are too slow they won’t last.”

“We’ll have to learn how to run while holding hands.” Isaac told her simply. “That is the only way I can keep us both invisible the entire way there… hopefully.”

“Your regeneration has increased enough for that?” Lenna questioned.

Isaac frowned. “I hope so. Only one way to find out.”

Kahtesh was sent back to bed and the duo started off in a jog with their hands locked together. They slowly increased in speed but it wasn’t very long before their grip slipped and they had to quickly stop and relink before the skeletons noticed anything. Luckily the invisibility was still made of shadows so they drew less attention even as the invisibility was fading away. Unluckily it was taking them far too long to get to the castle. Unfortunately they didn’t have a faster means of travel. By the time they had arrived they were long past their target time.

The low end of Isaac’s estimate had always been more of a wishful daydream than a probable timeline but they were already at thirteen hours. They had covered almost a hundred and fifty miles, if they counted the tunnels, by the time they were in front of the castle. They had been forced to stop to let Isaac regenerate his mana on more than one occasion which had only served to make everything worse.

Isaac and Lenna were now standing just outside of a blasted apart stone wall and were mentally readying themselves to brave whatever was inside. “Safeharbor better still be there when we get back.” Isaac swore, only Lenna could hear him because of their shared shadowcloak.

The castle was small by castle standards so it really was more of a fort than a castle but it was made of stone and had two clearly visible turrets from the front and a broken iron gate. In Isaac’s mind it checked all the boxes for a castle even if it was a long abandoned and half destroyed one. The front wall was two hundred feet across from the outside edge of a turret to the outside edge of the other one. The chunk of broken wall was right next to the leftmost turret and far enough from the gate that the gaping twenty foot bite that had been taken out of the wall hadn’t weakened the gate’s frame’s structural integrity. If they were on the surface there was no doubt in Isaac’s mind that the castle wouldn’t have been overrun with vines and shrubbery but in the Innerworld everything was just coated in a thick layer of red stone dust.

“Just focus on the task at hand. We can worry about Safeharbor afterwards.” Lenna told him. She took a deep focusing breath and then nodded once to set her mind solely on their objective.

“Wanna make a bet before we head in?” Isaac asked her.

“It depends on the bet.” Lenna replied.

“Five gold says that this is a trap.” Isaac told her.

“Isaac,” Lenna began. “we share a bank account.”

“Oh, yeah… how about a questionless favor?” Isaac offered.

Lenna shook her head. “We really only question each other if the idea sounded stupid or to make sure we didn’t miss anything.” She reminded him.

“Bragging rights?” Isaac offered a different bet.

Lenna chuckled. “Sure. Bragging rights.” She agreed. “I’ll take you up on that. I think we actually had a string of good luck but the frontline has had to pay for it.”