Chapter 84 Ash.
Sand kicked up as Lenna launched towards Esk with all the speed and power at her disposal. She was going to crush him, mercilessly, until nothing short of a grand resurrection could bring him back. Part of that was Isaac’s directive but the rest was the cold fury she still had towards the man. She had taken Esk calling Isaac a coward personally. She could understand calling him a demon, even if she didn’t like it. He was powerful, terrifying, and played by his own rules. In Lenna’s eyes Isaac was anything but a coward. Nothing scared him save for being in chains as far as she could tell. Even that seemed more like it was a soul deep trauma and not a natural fear. In that situation he had still refrained from breaking himself out of them for the sake of his own plan. No, Isaac was anything but a coward.
Lenna closed the distance between herself and Esk in an instant. The human barely got his sword up in time to block but it didn’t help him. Lenna’s sword plowed through his guard and slammed into his shoulder. Death flames singed his skin through the armor and he winced in pain as he was almost driven to a knee from the hit. He tried to step to the side and bring his own sword down on her but her sword was pulled back and her shoulder slammed into him.
Esk stumbled backward and gasped for air. Lenna’s blade was racing towards him again when he barely got out a spell chant: “Deflect!” He spoke in the language of magic and a small shard of reality caught Lenna’s blade and redirected it away from the magical knight.
Lenna didn’t let up but continued to attack. Esk saw an opening and swung at her. She took the strike on the forearm and continued her relentless barrage of lethal heavy strikes. Esk called for shard after shard of reality to keep her at bay while he tried to counter attack. Even with his magic she was forcing him back across the arena one step at a time. Each one of his own attacks was taken with little effort to lessen their impacts. The only time Lenna even bothered to block an attack was if he went for her head and even then she usually used her left arm so her right arm could continue her onslaught.
Esk was grunting and stumbling back even while casting shield after shield. After the first hit he realized that he was a dead man if she was actually ever to land a real attack on him. The plate rounding over the top of his shoulder was dented despite the double durability enchantments that were layered on his armor. He also could feel his sword pulling in more magic than usual right after their blades collided. Her strike was heavy enough to damage his legendary sword. He could also feel that she was passively burning mana to keep the pressure up on him. He secretly hoped that she would run out of mana before he did but he had no way of knowing if that would happen or not.
Lenna was surprised at the human’s ability to keep himself alive under her attacks. His attacks were lacking but she didn’t feel like getting her bell rung so she blocked any attack heading towards her head but the rest of the attacks she just let her armor take. He didn’t have enough behind each strike to do more than heat up her armor and fire was her thing.
“Deflect!” Esk called for the dozenth time. “Let my flames consume all before me!” He chanted while taking another attack on his shoulder despite trying to block it. The magical shield only lasted for a few seconds. One second too short for him to finish the chant for the cone of fire spell.
Lenna ignored the flames that Esk bathed her in and cut them off by relieving Esk of his left arm. The flames that were pouring out of its palm died out as the limb was taken by gravity away from his shoulder. Esk grit his teeth through the pain and tried to counter strike but Lenna caught his flaming sword with her gloved hand and brought her sword down in a vertical chop that cut off his other arm at the elbow. She slammed her shoulder into him again, tossing him half a dozen feet back. She stalked towards him and tossed his sword to the side.
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The announcer started running towards Lenna and Esk. “I-!” He was cut off by Lenna plunging her sword straight down through Esk’s gut, rending magically enhanced steel and flesh alike. Esk would have let out a cry of pain but he had lost the ability to breathe from the pain that he was in. Lenna yanked her sword out of him and knelt down over him.
“Come forth,” Lenna began and put her finger in the hole that her sword had just made. “Ember of a dying star.” She finished coldly. The bead of fire formed inside of the magical knight and tried to expand while in an enclosed structure.
Lenna’s finger broke from the explosion and her hand was forcefully tossed up. Her ears rang and she was glad that she turned her face away from the knight before the explosion went off. When she looked at his corpse there was little left of it. Well, that’s not quite accurate. There was plenty of it left but none of it was in the same place.
His armor was in a dozen pieces that were tossed around inside a twenty foot radius of the explosion point but there was blood and bits of flesh spread out over an area ten feet wider than that. “I’m going to use perdition.” Lenna said loud enough that she hoped Isaac heard.
A hand was on her shoulder in an instant. “No! Why?!’ Isaac demanded.
“Just heal me.” Lenna told him and rose to her feet. She was going to burn the human bits off of her armor and add onto the image Isaac was having her create. She was supposed to be the embodiment of power and fire so she was going to show Safeharbor what that meant. “I seek atonement for my sins,” Lenna began in a whisper and she could feel Isaac’s frown as he spiked the amount of death flames that he was feeding into her body and backed away. “I embrace perdition.”
Lenna’s body locked up but she refused to scream or drop to her knees. She only held the flames for two seconds before cutting them off. Her armor was uncomfortably hot but at least it wasn’t burning her. Her vision was tilting and twisting but Isaac’s familiar power was quickly cleansing her of all evidence of her most recent spell. Isaac had to start lowering the power feeding into Lenna as soon as he could because if the feeling of death got too strong it would upset the balance that they were maintaining with her aura. Lenna kept her sword covered in flames to hide Isaac’s magic and simply stood there for a few long seconds. The arena was silent.
—
Sera was watching the duel at the edge of her seat. She knew that Lenna would be aggressive but the raw aggression and power that she was seeing was far beyond what she was expecting. It wasn’t even a fight. It was a futile attempt at survival against an Innerworld, born and bred, monster. Crushing blow after crushing blow rang out as Eskahno was pushed back across the arena until finally he had hit Lenna with a cone of fire. Sera inhaled sharply as Lenna was briefly covered in fire but then her jaw dropped as Eskahno’s arm hit the ground and the fire vanished. What followed was the end of the fight for survival. With both arms gone it was only a matter of time before Eskahno bled out on the ground. He hadn’t had the chance.
Sera gasped in horror as she watched Lenna plunge her sword into the dying man’s stomach and then replace it with her fingers. She was shocked into silence when the body exploded. She felt sick to her stomach as the flesh, guts, and steel rained back down to the ground. “I… I wasn’t expecting this.” Sera whispered with a look of horror, shock, and disgust.
Everyone in the stands were silent after watching the explosion. It was a statement that the knight wasn’t allowed to be resurrected. There wasn’t anyone within nearly a thousand miles capable of bringing him back to life from that. Only a pope had the ability to cast a grand resurrection of that level and that ritual required a hundred thousand gold worth of resources. The shock only compounded when Lenna burst into flames for a moment. Once the flames were gone all of the blood and guts that had covered her were burned to ash and steam rose from her armor. Sera saw Edward wince from the seat next to her at the flames.
Sera turned to look at him, only barely tearing her eyes off of the carnage in front of her. “That wasn’t about the boy was it?” Sera asked her brother.
Edward wrinkled his nose slightly and frowned. “No. That spell actually lit her on fire. Her armor has to be hot enough to cook on and her clothes are probably ash.” He explained.
Lucius’ eyes snapped to his uncle. “What?! How can she stand?!” He looked to where ‘Isaac’ was sitting only to find the seat empty. A moment later a familiar figure appeared next to Lenna with a hand on her shoulder. Lucius switched his question to be directed at his mother.
Sera was pale. Nothing had gone as she had expected. It was far, far worse. The barbarism was beyond what she expected from the noble Lady Lenna V’Nova. It was crueler than what she expected from the benevolent villain known as Isaac Wexler. Sera could only hope that this was an extreme for them and that she hadn’t made too big of a mistake allying herself with them. Only time would tell.