Chapter 19 Sit Still

“How’s your aura holding up?” Isaac asked while the duo continued their trek to Ben’s End. It was taking a bit longer than initially estimated courtesy of Isaac wanting to stop for a midnight snack and then pre-breakfast four hours later. Lenna had been holding her aura at a radius of ten feet for the past seven hours.

“This is, a lot harder, than it used to be.” Lenna got out with obvious strain in her voice.

“Could you have held it for the full day before?” Isaac wondered. He had never seen her powerset before her oathbreaking and was curious.

“Yes.” Lenna replied. “For three full days, once.” Her changed aura was much more suited for lancing strikes at a person’s psyche or quick blasts of power to throw off an opponent's magic than blanketing an area. Her old aura was best used to weaken enemy magic while keeping her allies calm and focused. It was like a hot spring instead of an active volcano. Her aura soothed her allies’ nerves and made the enemies’ magic feel like it was fighting through water. Now it was explosive power and was only good at destroying things like people’s resolve and barriers that tried to hold her in.

“When you said it was harder, I didn’t realize how much harder.” Isaac said with some concern in his face. “Are you going to be in any shape to fight when we get to Ben’s End?”

“One more hour.” Lenna replied. “Then I’ll rest.”

Isaac stared at her for a long moment out of the corner of his eye. “Okay.” He said and slowed his pace a bit. Lenna slowed as well and seemed to get some mental energy back from not having to push her body. Isaac’s power was washing away mental fatigue as well as physical fatigue but the more strained Lenna’s aura the more effort it took to keep it active. At some point the mental effort necessary would exceed what Lenna was capable of. When that happened she would either pull her aura back in or it would collapse along with her consciousness. Five minutes short of the hour Lenna was going for, the latter happened.

Lenna’s foot didn’t move the whole way forwards and caught on a crack in the ground. Her arms didn’t even try to break her fall. She hit the stone ground like a sack of scrap metal. A slightly muffled clanging rang out down the tunnel and Isaac winced as he stopped next to her. Isaac knelt down next to his fallen mate and gently turned her over onto her back. The death flames still running through her system fixed her bloodied nose and he wiped the blood away. Isaac sat next to her and frowned while shaking his head. “And you say I’m crazy.” He spoke towards her unconscious form. He smiled and caressed her cheek. “I wish I had the willpower you do.” He said before adding in a whisper: “And not just the stat.”

—

Lenna groaned and opened her eyes. The stone tunnel’s ceiling met her gaze. She looked to the side and saw Isaac leaning against the wall next to her with his eyes closed and she could tell he was a few levels deep into meditating. She felt like her head should have been swimming but wasn’t and her nose was stuffy. She sat up and grabbed the self-cleaning rag that Isaac had rested on her bottomless bag for her. She looked back and saw that he had given her a folded blanket as a pillow. She looked over at him and smiled before turning back to her bag. She grabbed the rag and blew her nose, noticing it was mostly dried blood. ‘What happened?’ She asked herself internally. Her memory was foggy. A moment later a flash of realization crossed her face before a frown set in. ‘ …damnit.’ She grumbled internally. ‘I couldn’t even make it eight hours.’ She looked around and noticed the blood on the stone floor before wrinkling her nose. ‘That was embarrassing.’

—

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Isaac was floating. Not in the literal sense but in the spiritual sense. He felt the disconnect of his physical senses and his mind. He felt the lake of nigh unimaginable power that was his mana reserves. He felt the flow of the mana around him as it rolled off of his reserves and not his body. They were almost one in the same but not quite. He couldn’t tell which extended farther, his skin or his mana, but he knew that they were not perfectly aligned. He let go of his control and let the massive lake turn into a powerful river. The mana poured out of him and new mana poured in. He could tell that after a few seconds the mana he had expelled had started to be sucked in again. The mana was pouring out of his back and in his chest with his core acting like a tunnel. The rest of the mana in his body was churning like river rapids as it was constantly being replaced as well. He stopped breathing.

He felt like he didn’t need to breathe anymore. Mana would be enough for him. The world would sustain him if he let it. He just had to stay where he was and relax. It was very relaxing despite the churning and gushing mana inside and around him. He felt like he could stay like that forever. It was like all the pleasure of a good sleep while still being aware of it. A flash of annoyance came out of nowhere as the mana stream was altered slightly. A ripple was felt from below and behind him. He could tell that the source was far closer than it should have been. His own massive outpour of mana was the reason he hadn’t felt it earlier. A shock of adrenaline was accompanied by a resounding sense of danger. Isaac’s eyes shot open and he pulled on all the mana around him.

–

Lenna was watching Isaac meditate when he hit the final stage and the tunnel darkened. It darkened even to her perfect darkvision. The mana in the air became visible as it poured through Isaac. The current kept picking up until Isaac himself lifted off the ground. His body was completely relaxed as it rose. His eyes were closed and his arms and legs hung limply as he was picked up by nothing but pure mana pressure. The mana cycled through and around him in a way that brought back a memory from long ago.

Many, many decades ago, probably somewhere around two and three quarters centuries ago, a young Lenna was learning about the world. She had quite a few tutors, as befitted a scion of one of the great noble houses, and she didn’t like most of them. One of her tutors that she specifically hated was the one that taught her about the physical world. He taught her many things that she had forgotten over time as most of it was useless to her but at that moment one of the condescending bastard’s lessons came to mind.

“This is a magnetic field, child. Do you know why it exists?” He had asked her while looking down his nose in her general direction and tapping on a pair of squished ovals he had drawn on the wall of her study in chalk. Lenna shook her head with the most bored expression she could muster on her face. “Of course you don’t, child. That is why we are here.” He tapped the drawing harder. She could still picture his very punchable face.

Lenna didn’t remember the rest of the lesson but the magnetic field he had drawn was now being expressed in a very real, very visible sense as the mana cycled through Isaac. She was in awe at the power cycling when all of a sudden the wall behind Isaac vanished. ‘What?’ Her mind couldn’t wrap around why the wall was gone. Her eyes went wide as rows upon rows of lamprey teeth opened wide around Isaac.

—

Isaac turned in midair and braced for impact as all the dark mana around him crashed into his full mana reserves. He felt an odd resistance from the mana coming from the direction of the horror that was closing in on him. The Tunnel Horror to be precise. ‘Oh yeah, they hunt mages.’ Isaac grumbled. He wasn’t looking for a fight. In fact he was incredibly angry at having been pulled out of his meditation. He now understood why dragons were always so angry when someone invaded their lair. It wasn’t that the dragons were all bad tempered necessarily but simply the irritation that comes from being yanked out of a good nap by a worm. In Isaac’s case a very real, very large, very armored, heavily toothed, worm.

The dark mana around him turned to shadow as the dark mana inside of him turned to death. He compressed the shadows as hard as he could before impact. He felt the shadows being ground apart even before the worm’s teeth touched them. The mana of the monster tried to grind through Isaac and his mana but his control held firm. The result was him getting stuck just outside of the creature’s gaping maw. The only problem with that was that the worm didn’t slow down. He was smashed into the opposing tunnel wall and the stone around him started to crumble and turn to dust. The monster didn’t even have to touch it. The magic of the Tunnel Horror’s burrowing power was beyond anything Isaac was capable of understanding. It reminded him of a theory about how certain monsters came to be. Apparently… ‘No. Focus Isaac. There is a giant worm trying to eat me because it thinks I’m a walking nucl- ouch.’

—

Lenna’s sword was in her hand in a flash and as she jumped to her feet. She watched in horror as the Tunnel Horror tried to devour Isaac. Her horror turned to confusion as the two forces never directly collided. It seemed to hold Isaac in an invisible grasp as it slammed him into the wall. Lenna’s body was already moving, her aura solidified around her and along her blade, her sword was a torch in the dark tunnel as she closed the gap between herself and the worm. She heard the sound of grinding stone and noticed that although the worm had slowed it was still moving. ‘You have got to be joking.’ She grumbled internally. ‘He can’t even sit still without getting into trouble.’