Chapter 11 I Can Tell.

Isaac and Lenna took off in a dead sprint towards the smithy Mr. Nobody was using as a base. Both of them had death flames running through their systems to both keep up their endurance and continue fighting off the last remnants of the poison. They shoved past a few people along the way but the streets weren’t so full that most couldn’t just move out of the way of the charging mage and paladin. They both rounded the last corner before they would arrive at the smithy. What they saw surprised them.

Alexander was squaring off against the female wizard that was the magical half of Mr. Nobody. Three guards were getting absolutely destroyed by a group of five smiths and a clerk who all had large weapons from inside the shop. Alexander and the woman were continuously trying to cast spells only for them to be countered before they could fire. Spell after spell fizzled as the air became more and more charged with frenzied mana from the continuous clashing. Alexander may have been a lower level than the woman but he was a court mage and a prodigy at that. The fact that the woman had used a powerful teleportation spell to escape Isaac also served to balance out their available mana.

Isaac teleported behind one of the smiths and put his sword through the man’s back before teleporting again and hacking into another smith. His next teleport found his blade covered in death flames easily cleaving through another man. In a moment all of the smiths but one was dead and gone. The one smith that Isaac knew wasn’t really a smith. Isaac could feel the lack of presence the man had. The blank spot in his senses that unnerved him. They locked eyes. “Doppelganger, changeling, or drow with an item?” Isaac asked.

The man blinked and then tossed his smith’s hammer at Alexander. Lenna was there just in time to block the thrown weapon with her shoulder. The clash startled Alexander just enough that he failed to counter the next spell the other wizard cast. Her and the smith vanished in a quick and dirty teleport. There was a whoosh of air from the places they had both been. Alexander gestured to the roof of the smithy. “Up there!” He called.

Isaac’s mana senses had felt the teleport but he hadn’t spent nearly enough time training to be able to tell where they had gone. He did notice a slight drag in the mana in the direction that they had gone but it wasn’t clear if that was only because of the slightly botched teleport. Teleportation wasn’t supposed to have any interaction with the space involved. Most teleportation spells were very particular about only switching places and not just shunting one thing from point A to point B without refilling the space that something once inhabited. Something about the teleportation spell didn’t quite sit right with Isaac even as he started infusing his body with his entire regeneration rate’s worth of death flames. He took a quick step towards the building and turned to Lenna while interlocking his fingers and preparing to give her a boost.

Lenna caught the movement and lined herself up. She sprinted towards him and planted her boot in his hands. With a heave she was tossed most of the way to the roof. Her knee very nearly gave out under the strain. She realized quickly that she wouldn’t make it the entire way to the roof. With one perfectly timed motion she stabbed her sword into the stone wall. The stab helped slow her forward momentum so she didn’t slam into the wall and her aim was true. Her sword found the place where two stones met and forced its way between them. She was only a handful of feet from the edge of the roof but would still need Isaac to help her the rest of the way up.

Alexander lifted into the air as he cast a flight spell on himself and took off after the fleeing wizard and smith. Once he reached the height of the roof he pointed two of his fingers at the fleeing pair. “What I seek is thunder.” He chanted evenly. A thunderclap rang out as the lightning bolt streaked after his targets.

Isaac teleported to the roof and reached down to take Lenna’s outstretched hand. It was then that he realized the problem with their opponent’s teleport. Teleportation spells required direct contact to work. As far as he knew there wasn’t a way to teleport someone with you without being in physical contact with them. Something about the creature’s mana currents messing with the spell in some way or another. Isaac only skimmed the section about teleportation as the way he did it had nothing to do with proper space magic. His had everything to do with how weird shadows were and how esoteric dark mana could be instead. Isaac grabbed Lenna’s hand by the wrist and she did the same to him as he hoisted her the rest of the way up to the roof. They both turned just in time to see a fireball get snuffed out mid air by Alexander.

“Hurry, I’m running out of mana.” Alexander told them and then quickly threw a trio of red bolts of fire at the other wizard who deflected them with a small reality shield that vanished a moment later. She returned fire by casting a spell that summoned a floating sword that streaked at Alexander.

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“On it.” Isaac replied and the duo started to run after their targets. The other wizard and the smith had reached the end of their rooftop. She reached out and grabbed the shoulder of her companion before they both teleported the dozen feet to the next rooftop. The conjured sword abruptly changed direction to go after Isaac who effortlessly dodged the attack while sprinting. An orb of fire started to form in front of him a moment later. The distance was too far for him to grab it but close enough that he would take the resulting explosion to face. His enhanced perception from the large amount of death mana flowing through his nervous system let him know exactly how unpleasant the explosion would be. Isaac pulled his sword back out of his Inventory and dropped to his knees while stabbing the blade into the rooftop.

Lenna saw the orb start to form and knew that there was nothing she could do about it. Isaac was closer to the explosion than she was and she hoped that he would be able to weather it. She had faith in the power flowing through him but she was still worried. She tucked her shoulder just as the orb expanded to full size.

Alexander was flying after the rest of the combatants when the sword that was aiming for him went after Isaac instead. He wasn’t sure if he should be insulted that the other wizard had deemed Isaac more of a threat than the one who had been countering almost every one of her spells or he should be glad that he didn’t have to deal the summoned weapon. He hadn’t been prepared for the fireball. It looked like both of his companions would be caught in it. ‘That doesn’t bode well.’ He thought as he changed his flight path to keep him well above the explosion. He lined up a lightning bolt in retaliation. The fireball washed the rooftop in orange light and heat.

Isaac hadn’t been hit by a fireball directly before. It wasn’t something he would recommend either. His favorite cloak was blasted clean off of him even as it burned to ash. His armor got uncomfortably hot. The almost nonexistent hairs on Isaac’s exposed forearms were burned off along with his eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair. The pain was deep and raw but not the most excruciating he had felt to date. Unpleasant but not debilitating. By the time he opened his eyes his hair had all grown back from the power flowing through him. He looked up to see the pair reaching the end of another rooftop. He rose to his feet.

Lenna’s momentum was arrested violently by the explosion of magical fire that washed across the rooftop. She staggered but quickly regained her footing and looked at Isaac as he rose from the kneeling position he had taken to weather the explosion. She noticed a change in his body language as she watched his hair regrow within the span of a second. ‘So much for taking them alive.’ Was the one thought that went through her head immediately after she was sure he was alright.

Alexander was starting to actually run out of mana. He had been engaged with this other wizard for nearly a minute before Isaac and Lenna arrived. He knew that she had to be scraping the bottom of the barrel as well. His plan was just to keep pressuring her until Isaac and Lenna could catch up to deal with them properly. At least that had been his plan until he watched Isaac appear right in front of the wizard and grab her by the face. He could see the flaring reality shield between Isaac’s hand and her skin and he watched with wide eyes as the prismatic pane of reality turned black under an absolutely insane amount of mana pressure.

Isaac summoned Kahtesh right next to him and ordered the dragon to tear the shapeshifter’s throat out. His hand clamped down as hard as it could as he poured his reserves into the reality shield. He picked the woman off the ground by her face before turning and slamming her down onto the rooftop. The back of her head hit first and he thought he heard a crack. It could have been any number of things, the reality shield, the roof, the woman’s skull, hells even Isaac’s wrist. He turned in time to see Kahtesh getting tossed across the rooftop by the smith. ‘He’s stronger than I thought.’ Isaac thought while standing back to his full height. The smith let out a cry of rage at what Isaac had just done to his companion and charged at Isaac.

Lenna planted her foot on the edge of the rooftop mid sprint. She sprinting long jumped the gap between the two buildings before landing in a roll just as Kahtesh rolled to a stop next to her.

Alexander watched in shock and horror as the reality shield fell away from the other wizard’s face in five pieces before fading away. ‘That shouldn’t be possible.’ His mind stuttered to itself. He had forgotten about the battle itself as his mind tried to understand how a wall of reality magic could be destroyed with anything other than disintegration magic.

Isaac rolled under the smith’s punch before returning his own at full force into the man’s stomach. The six foot tall, two hundred and fifty pound smith folded like a sheet of paper. His spine was shattered from Isaac’s knuckles hitting it through all the gooey bits that were in between them. Isaac’s shoulder tried to dislocate and every joint in between his shoulder and the point of impact was compressed to a painful degree before they could be returned to normal. The larger man left the ground before crashing back to the rooftop in a heap.

The smith’s form started to warp and shift and his body tried to rearrange itself. He shrunk slightly and got a little wider to compensate. His skin turned stony gray and looked like it hardened slightly. Isaac was on top of him before he could move. Isaac’s fist cocked back as the man’s eyes started to flutter back open. They widened just in time for Isaac to bounce the man’s head off the stone roof via a punch to the nose. Isaac almost fell over from his own impact force. He quickly reoriented and grabbed the smith by his shirt for stability before pounding his head back into the stone again. Then again and again before Lenna got to his side.

Isaac finally stopped and straightened. He looked back at the fallen wizard and then at Lenna. “They pissed me off.” He offered his excuse.

“I can tell.” Lenna replied evenly. She looked over at the fallen wizard. “Her traps pissed me off too.”