Chapter 55 Brace!

“How long is this going to take?” Esk questioned aloud to anyone who would answer. They had been waiting for a few minutes already and Isaac still wasn’t moving.

“It shouldn’t be much longer.” Lenna replied. “I’m sure it would be easier for him to meditate if you stopped tapping your foot.”

Esk froze and looked down at his feet. “Sorry.” He whispered. It was times like then that Lenna was reminded of exactly how young most of the humans surrounding her were.

“Just be ready.” Lenna told him. No sooner had she finished her words did Isaac reach the final stage of meditation. The dark mana poured in his chest and out his back as his body became more and more like a mere vessel for mana instead of a human body. They lost sight of Isaac around the time he started to rise up off the ground from the pressure of the forming mana fields.

“What in all that lives?” The sorceress questioned in a whisper. She felt her knees grow weak. Isaac had seemed like an eccentric, prone to outburst, sociopathic, powerhouse who was obviously pretending to be a lower level than he was. What she was seeing and feeling at that moment shattered that notion entirely. She had been in the presence of meditating archmages before. They were like children compared to Isaac. It was the difference between a small brook and a river. She had thought that the archmages were the pinnacle of what could be achieved. She had learned from them and mastered a dozen fire spells and a handful of additional utility ones but she felt like the most she could do was pretend to be a mage. What Isaac was showing her was what true mastery of one’s element looked like. She was a sorcerer blessed with a strong connection to fire and heat but he was truly in command of death and shadow. “He wasn’t kidding.” She whispered as his self proclaimed title rang out in her mind.

“I can’t believe I wanted to fight that.” Esk added.

“He’s going to be calling them from miles around!” Fable yelled to snap everyone out of their stupor and/or reverence. “Prepare for contact!”

—

The blank canvas of mana was as comforting as it was all encompassing. The cool breeze on a hot day and the warm blanket on a cold night. The comfort of a familiar embrace. This is what Isaac was so completely absorbed in that he forgot the reason why he was meditating in the first place. A muffled voice prodded the edges of his consciousness. He had the vague feeling of something important going on but the mana felt too nice. The voice continued and then he felt the familiar and irritating sense of something approaching him. It was dark but not nearly as dark as him. It was also… wrong. It was devouring mana on its way to him. Isaac wouldn’t have cared if it had left the dark mana alone. That was his and it wasn’t allowed to eat it. A tinge of childlike irritation quickly grew into an overwhelming indignant fury. He felt like a child and someone had just yanked his favorite toy out of his hands. His eyes flew open not at the realization of the planned fight, nor from Fable’s yelling and ordering the Flame Ravens around, but instead from the sheer irritation of having something taken from him.

The mana continued flowing through Isaac for a few seconds after his eyes had opened. His mind was still trying to turn back on as his eyes were fed nothing but blackness as sensory input. It took a moment for him to fully reawaken from his meditation. A moment that the Tunnel Horror used to get as close as possible to the biggest feast it had ever felt.

—

The team watched as all of the flowing dark mana abruptly turned into hardened shadows and flew forwards. What it revealed was a levitating Isaac who was being held up by the shadows still clinging to him. He was yanked to the side by the shadows as a gaping maw of thousands of teeth became visible. Isaac was controlling enough shadows to pack their room at the Celestial Dawn full to the ceiling. They had latched onto his quarry and used the monster as an anchor point to move their master out of harm’s way. “Esk, Fina, fire!” Fable ordered as he held his ground. He had to wait until both of the Tunnel Horrors were together to start casting but the other two could start slowing down the first one in the meantime.

—

Isaac heaved with everything he had. His head was already hurting from controlling so much power at once but he couldn’t keep the grin from his face. His feet planted on the back of the Tunnel Horror as its head was forced up into the air from the shadows clamped around it like a fat collar. ‘Who collars a worm?’ Isaac jokingly questioned himself. The worm had come from almost directly in front of him. It had been traveling at a slight incline but now its head was pointing straight up. Its momentum halted as its trajectory was no longer its own to decide.

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Isaac felt the second one coming at him at almost the same angle that the first one had come from. ‘I wonder if they can eat each other?’ He questioned and jumped up into the air right as the second one passed through the space he had just occupied. The second one was far smaller than the first. The first one was an impressive eight feet wide at the mouth where the second was only four. The second one impacted the first perpendicularly and its moment was instantly halted. The world seemed to freeze in place as Isaac took in the moment. His feet were only two feet above the smaller Tunnel Horror’s back and his face was five feet away from the larger one. It was at that moment that Isaac had another one of his famously awful ideas.

—

Lenna watched in horror as her favorite mage in the entire world landed on the back of a monster known for devouring mages. Not only did he land on its back but he was also grinning like a madman. When the shadows that had been manhandling the first Tunnel Horror moved and wrapped around the smaller one she realized exactly what was going through his head. She didn’t know if she should yell at him, cry, or laugh at the insanity. Sometimes he really did have the worst ideas. If she didn’t know any better she would think he was trying to make her age as fast as he was. Her mind was made up for her a moment later.

The Tunnel Horrors started to flail and wiggle as they tried to orient on Isaac. Much to their annoyance he was at an impossible angle for both of them. The larger of the two decided that it would just finish its forced rotation and come down at him from above. The smaller of the two tried to shake from side to side in order to knock Isaac free of its back. Lenna couldn’t help but chuckle along with Isaac’s laughter that broke out as he yanked the smaller one to the side hard enough that the larger one skipped off its other side. It had missed Isaac by a foot at best but he looked like he was having the time of his life.

—

‘What in all of the hells am I watching?’ Esk mentally questioned as he fired off his second Ice Arrow. The projectile impacted the larger worm and forced all of its heat lowering magic into the monster with little fanfare. Isaac’s laugh sounded like it came from a mad wizard who had just created a world ending spell. It was deep and dark and full of an elation that didn’t match their current circumstances. ‘There is no way that he is human.’

—

Isaac got a good look at the damage one Tunnel Horror could do to another one on their third collision. The chitinous plating on the smaller Tunnel Horror was worn completely through at one specific point. It was the place where the larger one’s mouth had directly made contact. They seemed to have an incredibly high resistance to their own disintegration magics but they were not quite immune. This meant that the smaller one was bound to die first as Isaac tried to tie them into knots with each other’s bodies but it was unlikely that the large one was going to die as well. There would be plenty of places with weakened armor that could be exploited though so maybe they wouldn’t need Fable to freeze them both to death. ‘Wait, wasn’t I supposed to be doing something to help him?’ Isaac questioned himself. ‘Oh yeah, I forgot about that.’ He thought as he pulled the Ocean in a Bottle out and turned it upside down.

Water glugged out of the Ocean in a Bottle at an astonishing rate. The water rolled off of the shadows and chitin alike but the ground that they kept carving through was quickly covered in it. “Ready when you are!” Isaac called out to Fable. The old man was sure taking his sweet time getting ready to cast his spell.

“Brace!” Isaac heard Lenna yell right before the temperature dropped. A freezing fog passed right by him.

Isaac’s mount continued on its course and Isaac got a quick look at the spell Fable was using. There was a massive glowing light blue sigil floating in the air in front of the spellblade. It was the most flashy starting point for any spell Isaac had seen to date. Behind the four concentric circles that each held a square perfectly within their borders there were four balls of magic. One was a green orb of air that focused air through the middle of the sigil. One was a Blue orb of water that sent a jetstream into the middle of the sigil as well only for it to be blasted into a focused mist by the first orb. The third was a green orb that Isaac felt the color of more than saw it and it seemed to send some kind of energy into the mist stream. That was probably why the mist wasn’t slowing regardless of how much ground it covered as Fable was twenty feet away and the mist was still going strong. The fourth was similar to the third but it was blue instead of green. This one’s effect was obvious. It stole the heat from the mist instantly. Inside of the mist small ice shards formed and were blasted forwards at the same speed as the frozen mist.

Isaac finally had to let go of his unwilling mount as he teleported to the opposite side of the larger Tunnel Horror. The brief bit of cold he had received from just being close to the mist had left his joints aching and teeth chattering. Isaac danced, wove, and teleported around the Tunnel Horrors for around two dozen seconds before the smaller one snapped and shuttered before collapsing to the ground with a resounding thud. It continued twitching as Fable continued to pour on the cold. The larger one realized what was happening to them and tried to orient itself on Fable to get rid of him when all of a sudden a massive surge of power drew its attention.

Isaac realized that they were close to the end so he wasn’t going to hold back. He focused all of his power inwards as he started boosting himself as much as he could. It was just in time too because he watched as the larger Tunnel Horror switched focus to Fable and then abruptly back to him. It was only a matter of time before Fable’s magic finished off the larger worm as well. Isaac jumped back as the Tunnel Horror’s maw tore through the stone he had just been standing on. He had to teleport back unto the ground directly under the monster’s gaping maw or else he would have been devoured by it. The monster’s reaction time was truly insane for something so large. It had immediately locked onto him once his first teleport was over. Isaac braced as best as he could and uppercutted the underside of the monster. He heard something crack and something else shatter as his boost reached its climax. He was on a thirty second timer and he was going to try and make the most of it.

Isaac followed his uppercut up with two more as the monster’s momentum was interrupted by the force of Isaac’s punches rippling through its body. After the seventh hit the monster stopped struggling and Isaac teleported away to get a good look at the situation. It’s massive frame slammed onto the ground hard enough to knock stone dust from the ceiling and shatter the ice that was covering half of the cavern’s floor. Isaac felt the smaller Tunnel Horror finally perish and he could feel the larger one following suit.

While burning with more power than any mortal sorcerer or wizard would ever be able to wield, Isaac took in the battlefield. Half of the cavern was covered in a thick layer of ice. The only reason he wasn’t covered in ice as well was because of the shadows covering most of him. The Tunnel Horrors looked like they had been pulled out of a snowstorm as the frozen mist continued to collect on them in the form of a mix of ice and snow. Fable finally cut the power to his spell and the two shared a nod. Neither particularly liked each other but they had done good work all in all. Who knew if it would continue. Some hoped it would while others wished it wouldn’t. Only time would tell which would be the case.