Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 55 Die For Me.

Isaac could hear Lenna’s voice through the pain and spinning but only barely. Oddly enough it was his impact with the wall that seemed to clear his head. Either that or it was his mana that finally finished breaking down the hostile magic via pure potency difference. ‘Damn it!’ Isaac swore as he teleported a dozen feet away from where he had crumpled to the ground. It was just in time too because twenty orange streaks slammed into the place he had just been.

Isaac looked up just in time to see Lenna’s Fireball go off. Shamsha was too focused on killing Isaac that he wasn’t paying attention to Lenna. The skeleton was tossed a dozen feet backwards but after the fire faded over a dozen small Reality Shields flickered and faded away. Shamsha casually tossed a lightning bolt at Lenna with a flick of his wrist before he returned his full focus to killing Isaac.

Lenna took the lightning bolt in the chest mid sprint and stumbled but she easily turned it into a roll and was back on her feet. Her Armor of Ire ate up a bit of the attack and whatever it didn’t she was already healing away.

Isaac had to teleport out of the blast radius of another fireball only for it not to explode. The ‘ember of a dying star’ simply sat there glowing in all of its brilliant orange glory, waiting, patiently hoping that someone would get close enough for it to explode. Isaac had to unwind his boosting skill a bit so he could regenerate his mana again. His berserk state hadn’t thought through what burning so much mana would mean for the battle and now he was struggling to regain the ground he had lost. He was thoroughly on the back foot. ‘It’s time for backup.’ Isaac thought and teleported outside of the wall.

It only took Isaac two seconds to place Alexander’s beacon, press its button, and return to the battle but in that time Shamsha had switched his focus entirely to Lenna.

Lenna narrowly twisted out of the way of the Disintegrate aimed at her and then tried to throw a Fireball back at Shamsha. The skeleton simply reached out and closed his fist and the Fireball winked out with little fanfare. Another Disintegrate was coming at Lenna too quickly for her to dodge so she did the only thing she could do in such a situation; she made a sacrifice. Lenna caught the incoming Disintegrate with the tip of her sword and could only watch as the weapon’s length was halved in a blink.

Isaac appeared behind Shamsha in mid air and tried to hack into the skeleton with his sword. A reality shield caught the blade and then another thunderous explosion caught Isaac without the skeleton even turning to face him. Isaac twisted in mid air to be facing the direction he was flying and teleported back to Shamsha. He used his momentum from being thrown away by the thunderous automatic spell of the skeleton to jam the point of his sword into the spell caster. Again, much to Isaac’s chagrin, his blade was caught by a reality shield and he was thrown away.

“YOU WEAK, PATHETIC, IGNORANT, INANE, IMBECILIC, WORM!” Shamsha swore at Isaac. “LEARN YOUR PLACE!”

Isaac continued his seemingly futile attacks while he tried to figure out a way to deal with the skeleton. Isaac was really betting on Alexander showing up to help, it had only been a handful of seconds but he was starting to get the feeling that Alexander wouldn’t be coming. Isaac knew that in the meantime he would have to make do. He just really wished that he didn’t have to. Kahtesh appeared with a crack of thunder and a lightning bolt that slammed into the side of Shamsha. As expected, the Reality Shields appeared to block the strike but before they faded Isaac had already tried to stab Shamsha’s other side.

Shamsha was entirely unharmed by everything Isaac, Lenna, and Kahtesh could throw at him. Even Isaac’s attempt at attacking him from both sides did nothing and neither of them had mental magics, not that they were likely to work on something without a brain. “Damn it!” Isaac swore aloud.

Shamsha’s attention snapped to the newcomer and he reached out and closed his hand in the direction of the skeletal dragon. He then made a throwing motion towards Lenna and the skeleton was catapulted at Lenna with enough force to toss her off over her feet and break Kahtesh in half. Lenna’s armor saved her from the majority of the impact but Kahtesh had no such luxury. The next time Isaac was in Shamsha’s line of sight he used another spell that had seemed to work quite well on Isaac before. “FEAR ME!” He ordered the dark mage.

Isaac felt the magic slam into him, but right before it could overtake everything, he slammed his mana reserves and mental strength into the incoming spell. The spell shattered against the proverbial fist of an angry god that Isaac had hit it with. Isaac retaliated by teleporting right onto the skeleton. Before he could be blasted away Isaac had already locked his arm around Shamsha’s neck. Reality Shields kept Isaac from directly touching Shamsha but there was still plenty of leverage for Isaac to keep from getting blasted away. It hurt though. It hurt a lot. All of the air in Isaac’s boosted lungs was blasted out and he heard the straps on his armor strain and creak under the sudden force. One of his buttons snapped and he felt his left pauldron abruptly loosen.

At so close to Shamsha, Isaac could feel where the center of the skeleton’s power was. It was a little lower than the core of a living person and Isaac knew that not only would they have to get through the seemingly endless amount of reality shields but they would also need to destroy that part of Shamsha if they wanted to end the ancient monster. Isaac reached down and slammed his hand into the reality shields that were blocking the skeleton’s core. “GET OFF OF ME!” Shamsha yelled and Isaac was almost dislodged again by a very purposeful thunderous explosion.

“Then die for me.” Isaac shot back through gritted teeth.

Lenna jumped to her feet and launched her sword at Shamsha’s face. The sword impacted a Reality Shield that showed up to block it but in exchange he wouldn’t be able to see for a second or two.

The moment of distraction from Lenna’s sword hitting Shamsha’s face was enough for Isaac to get an idea. Isaac teleported down to one of the skeletons and threw it at Shamsha. It impacted him as expected, before he could react, and set off the thunderous explosion. “It has to have a limit!” Isaac called out Lenna. Lenna nodded and grabbed a rock off the ground before she launched it at Shamsha with all her strength.

“WHAT?!” Shamsha cried out as he was jostled around by impact after impact hitting him from different directions. He couldn’t see because they always made sure to target his face. He put his hands up in front of his face to intercept the next attack only for some of them to start coming from behind him. “KILL THEM.” He ordered his minions and all of the skeletons switched targets from the city to Isaac and Lenna in an instant. Momentarily there was a lul in the incoming projectiles and he looked around. A bone slammed into the Reality Shields in front of his face again and he was no longer able to see as he recoiled from the sudden impact.

Isaac had collected the entirety of the skeleton that he had thrown at Shamsha and began using it as projectiles. The shockwave had destroyed the skeleton but Isaac didn’t need it in one piece to throw it at Shamsha. Lenna had done roughly the same thing but she didn’t have the luxury of an Inventory to hold the skeleton’s pieces. Then, all of a sudden, all of the skeletons seemed to notice that they were there. ‘Shit.’ Isaac swore internally and cut a few of them down before he threw another bone at Shamsha’s face. Lenna had taken one of their spears and, using mana and aura enhanced strength, launched it through five of them where it got stuck.

“Now what?!” Lenna called out. She followed it up with a Wall of Flames that took up the entire gate leading out of the castle. This meant that no old skeletons would be able to come back in the way they had left but they still had to deal with all the new skeletons.

“Crush them!” Isaac called out.

“How?” Lenna demanded and beat a skeleton with another skeleton.

“Forget about me and use your aura!” Isaac yelled back as he kept up as much pressure on Shamsha as he could. Shamsha had been put on his back foot but that didn’t mean very much if the skeleton never ran out of defenses.

Lenna’s aura surged out of her and slammed down onto the area around her with everything she had. All of the rage that she had in her heart was burned as fuel to enhance the soul-deep weight of her aura. The skeletons around her staggered and some of them fell over from the impact. Some of them even turned to flee in an almost living gesture of self preservation. Lenna knew that it was just the effect of her aura but it made her feel an immense sorrow for those that had been trapped in their own dead bodies to be puppetted around by this ancient monster. Unfortunately for Shamsha, that fact only served to increase her anger towards him and the potency of her aura.