Chapter 34 A Barrel Of Blasting Jelly.
A tempest in the shape of a globe a dozen feet across formed in the middle of the side street lording over it. Inside was the woman that was known as the Crime Queen of Sapphirestone, Topaz. A bolt of lightning shot out of the orb one after the other and Isaac was forced to block, surround, and capture each one with shadows to prevent them from jumping to Lenna as she finished off Topaz’s lackeys. Isaac couldn’t get close to Topaz because her tempest was too dense for him to shadow-step into. She had succeeded in making a space that he could not enter. The winds were also far too violent for a thrown weapon to have any chance at getting to her.
The storm sorceress managed to keep Isaac pinned down for nearly a dozen seconds before Lenna had sufficiently finished off all of her allies in the area. The only reason it had taken Lenna that long was because of the first lightning strike that had managed to hit her. Her fingers on that arm were still not entirely cooperating but they were working good enough for most functions. “Secondaries destroyed.” Lenna told Isaac and whirled on the primary threat. “Alive?” She asked him.
“I would like to-” He had to cut himself off as thunder rolled again just like it had between each of Lenna’s callouts. “-but it might not-” A roll of thunder and another lightning bolt diffused. “-be possible.” He finished.
A roll of thunder. “Understood.” Lenna replied and then immediately followed it up with a spell whose chant was drowned out by another roll of thunder. With an upwards gesture from her hand a gate to the realms of fire and the hells opened up beneath Topaz. The geyser of black and orange flames would have reached two dozen feet into the air had there not been a spherical thunderstorm directly above it.
“Ahh!” Topaz screamed in pain and agony as the black flames were suddenly forced through her protective barrier. The orange flames of the spell were entirely defused by the ice in the storm which turned to water as a result.
Suddenly the area around them dropped in temperature and fog started to form all around. Static discharges bounced from water droplet to water droplet as Topaz tried to unleash a ninth level spell. Right as the mana pressure from the spell activating was reaching its zenith it shattered and broke apart. Topaz’s curses of surprise and anger could barely be heard over the roaring winds surrounding her, but the fog rapidly cooking off in the afternoon sun was enough to show what had happened.
A moment later and the vortex of cloud, cold, and thunder broke apart and was flung outwards in all directions before dissipating. Isaac was about to teleport next to her when the spell was recast. It only took another heartbeat for Topaz’s control to once again be ripped from her grasp. She tried again and again and again until she was no longer flying but panting on the ground. Over and over again the spell was diffused, crushed, and dispelled by an unseen and unfelt force.
“What? What is this?” Topaz panted as she glared up at Isaac who was forcing his way through the repetitive explosions. Lightning shot down her arm and she flicked her wrist towards Isaac but it was uselessly redirected into the ground. The lightning bolt was just a cover for her attempt at recasting her tempest again but it was ignored in favor of crushing her protective spell once more.
Isaac’s hair was ruffled, he was damp and a little cold, but nothing more. “Tell me everything about your operation or I’ll just kill you and ask your corpse.” Isaac told her simply.
Without warning, lightning exploded out from Topaz in all directions and she was forced up into the air as if magnetically held aloft by her core. Her eyes blazed with arcs of electricity and her hair rose in all directions from the massive amount of static in the air. She was actively giving off a red mist as she looked down her nose at Isaac. The lightning in the air was so dense that it forced all of the other colors of mana out of the area directly around her entirely. Her power flickered but was not dispelled. It flickered again and again and again. Her face blazed with fury and indignation at whatever or whoever was continually trying to dispel her magic.
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“I refuse to be defeated by the likes of you.” Topaz spoke with a voice so resounding and commanding that even Isaac was impressed. “Now die.” She told him and all of the lightning around her suddenly snapped.
A thousand tiny bolts of electricity lanced into Isaac. Some of them combined into larger ones while others found their own way to him. Regardless of how they got there, over a hundred bolts of electricity slammed into Isaac at the same time. He barely had enough time to start forcing mana out of himself to act as a buffer before he was lit up like a copper tower in a thunderstorm. Isaac’s mana was blasted away by the magically guided but very real bolts of lightning that seemed hellsbent on ending him. Isaac’s cloak was lit on fire as were the rest of his clothes. Some of it was from the lightning directly but most was from the sudden heat spike in the copper surrounding him. The copper did its job and sufficiently redirected all of the electricity away from his body and into the ground but unfortunately it was far too much lightning for the amount of copper and the result of that was the copper very quickly reaching hundreds of degrees.
A lattice of pain surrounded Isaac as the copper tried to melt through him. By the time he had refocused enough to look at Topaz, she was already face down on the ground either unconscious or dead after burning her blood for power. Something that only insane sorcerers and sorceresses were known to practice was the art of turning their blood into mana, much like how a witch used lifeforce to cast curses and other witchcraft. It was dangerous and very easily lethal to the mage but it was also one of the ways that distinguished a sorcerer with conviction from one without.
Isaac didn’t have the time to contemplate that however as he was actively on fire. Shadows pulsed out of him and quickly smothered the fire before a jet of water slammed into his back. It was enough to cause him to stagger but not nearly enough to do any damage. Lenna had quickly begun using her Ocean in a Bottle to try and put out the fires, that were already out, and cool off Isaac’s lighting defensive equipment.
Lenna circled Isaac a few times as she utterly soaked every inch of him. By the time she was done, his armor’s copper rigging had been sufficiently cooled down and he was completely healed due to his own death flames that had been roiling beneath the surface. Topaz hadn’t even stirred. “Is she dead?” Isaac questioned once Lenna had stopped spraying him.
‘No, my lord, she is somehow barely still alive.’ Shamesh told him. ‘What would you like me to do with her?’
“She’s dangerous.” Isaac commented while water continued to cascade down his face from his soaked hair. “Like, really dangerous.”
“Yeah.” Lenna agreed. “Maybe more than Fen.”
“Yes and no.” Isaac replied. “Fen is like an assassin, quiet, lethal, with low collateral damage. Topaz is like a barrel of blasting jelly. She’ll probably kill whatever her target is and everything within a dozen yards of it.”
“Who was harder to beat?” Lenna wondered.
“Topaz. But only because I had no way to get to her. If Shamesh hadn’t been here, then I would have had to dump my entire mana capacity into her swirly storm thing in an attempt to melt her with death flames. I really had no other ideas. Maybe I could have boosted myself up enough that a thrown rock could have blasted through it and taken her out, but I would have been throwing blindly.” He answered her. “Fighting Fen was more like a full contact game of tag than anything else.”
Lenna nodded. “I can see that. And yes, my only ideas were Fireball and Hellflame Strike. Nothing else I could do would have had much of, if any, effect on her.”
“Well, she’s down for the count now. The only question is what to do with her.” Isaac commented while glaring down at the unconscious sorceress with a frown.
“We don’t have any friends in the area.” Lenna reminded him. “I have no idea how to keep her prisoner.”
Isaac sighed. “Shamesh, tie her up and cast Invisibility on her. We’ll take her back to our room. Unfortunately, you are going to have to keep watch over her while Lenna and I go meet with Duke Sasston. If she wakes up while we are away, feel free to begin questioning her, but make sure you counter every spell that she casts, again. I don’t want her escaping if we can help it. As it stands, the only reason she is still alive is because she is bound to know everyone involved with the underground slave market. Once we have that information, then her usefulness is finished. After that, if she becomes a problem for any reason, her life will be forfeit.” He instructed his retainer.
Shamesh bowed while still only visible to Isaac. ‘As you say, my Lord.’