Chapter 94 Vorpal

Lenna barely managed to get out of the way of a jail cell shaped sieve with the power of a landslide behind it. Isaac almost seemed to let it pass through him as he teleported away and then back again to where he had been. The sieve of reality magic, and its resulting impact, threw gold dust and chunks in every direction. It barreled through the golden mass with little regard for resistance of any kind. It did stop increasing in speed but it was still going fast enough to succeed in its intended purpose. The cell abruptly stopped a handful of feet away from the far wall and the sound of rending metal and crushing stone reverberated through the very walls themselves.

“I caught it!” Karthen exclaimed. “Alexander, now what?”

Alexander appeared next to Lenna with a quick step that teleported him the twenty feet that had been between them. “Quicken.” Alexander chanted and cast the spell on Lenna.

Isaac gave Alexander a nod and then vanished. Isaac appeared inside of the cage of reality magic to get a good look at their opponent. What he saw was to be expected. There was a runic array layered on top of itself that worked as the list of rules and directives the golem would follow. It also served to store memories so it could continue to fulfill old orders without needing to be reminded. The runic array was made of platinum that was infused inside of a diamond the size of Isaac’s torso. They had all underestimated the size of the monster’s ‘heart’.

Isaac changed the path of his mana regeneration from boosting his strength and speed to creating half a dozen arms and hands. His shadowy limbs reached through the bars and clamped onto the giant diamond. “PULL IT BACK!” Isaac yelled over the sounds of battle and encroaching golden sand. Gold was trying to fill in around the diamond regardless of what was in the way. That meant that his cage was rapidly filling up with chunks of gold and gold dust that were attempting to smother him against the bars closest to the diamond.

“Return to me.” Karthen ordered the magical construct forged of the mana of existence itself, and it listened.

Isaac, the diamond, a few hundred pounds of gold, and the Reality Prison were all yanked towards the ancient wizard. No sooner had Isaac and company reached a high speed did the cage vanish and Lenna appear. Her sword was already coming down with blazing flames of wrath and conviction. Lenna threw everything she had into that one downward strike. Her armor blazed with her aura as it enhanced her strength and her muscles threatened to tear themselves apart under their own adrenalin enhanced frenzy. Her sword cleaved through gold as if it were water. The adamantine was unblemished as Lenna forced it through a hundred times more metal than it was.

Lenna’s sword impacted the diamond with a resounding clang. She felt the bones in her hand fracture as her sword was immediately arrested. Alexander ducked under her arm and placed both of hands against the diamond. “Command: Negation.” He chanted and all the gold froze in place as if time had stopped. The diamond dimmed as the platinum inside of it stopped glowing. “Do it again.” Alexander told Lenna in a rush. “It’ll power itself back on any sec-” He cut himself off as all of the platinum magical runic array ignited again in a blaze of silver-white light. “Command: Negation.”

Isaac slammed his hand into Lenna’s back as he imparted enough death flames to regrow an arm. The bones in her hand rapidly ‘killed’ their fractures and returned to their optimal condition. Lenna brought her sword up to stab down into the diamond. “Boost me.” Lenna told Isaac and slammed her sword down in the tiny grove that her earlier attack had made.

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Isaac focused and began boosting up Lenna’s strength as much as he could as quickly as he could as Alexander repeatedly turned off the golem’s heart. “Alexander, I believe I have a solution to this.” Karthen offered from half a dozen feet away. He was standing just at the edge of the golden carnage with a finger raised tentatively.

“Just do it!” Alexander told the older wizard before he followed it up with another cleansing of the diamond’s mana.

“An ax that cannot cut is not an ax at all, a sword that brings no disaster is not a sword at all, a spear that cannot pierce is not a spear at all, a weapon that is not vorpal is not a weapon at all.” Karthen chanted and raised his hands over his head while he walked steadily towards them. A fragment of space that seemed to hate existence itself formed into a pane of glass in the shape of the cut out of a sword. It looked like the cracked glass of a broken window yet it was somehow the very fabric of space itself. It looked like nothing as it was still easy to see what was on the other side of it but looking through it just felt wrong somehow. The image didn’t seem correct, almost as if the contrast was stripped from the colors on the other side of it. This weapon of magic and destruction formed with its hilt hovering between Karthen’s hands as if he were wielding it over his head. “Step back.” He told them.

Lenna backed away and Alexander dispelled the diamond one more time before he did the same. Lenna had done noticeable damage to the diamond but a sword, no matter how sharp, still had a width to it. The wedge shape of a sword was the reason why she couldn’t cut any deeper than she had been. As it stood, she had taken a chunk out of it after a series of well placed stabs with the strength of seven men and an almost undamageable sword. Karthen’s sword was a sword in silhouette alone. It had no width and thereby could not be hung up on the material of which it was about to cut.

Karthen tentatively set his feet and cut downwards. His magical construct of the concept of ‘vorpal’ slashed through the diamond as if it wasn’t even there. The diamond parted in two and all the gold that had been suspended in the air dropped to the ground in a loud crash and a hundred thuds. Karthen looked down at the weapon in his hands and took a deep steadying breath. “Command: Negation.” He spoke softly towards the blade. His magic broke apart the sword and it shattered into a million panes that had no color yet every color for the fraction of a second that they existed before they faded into nothingness. Karthen immediately dropped onto his rear, onto a pile of gold, breathing deep relieved and relaxing breaths. “I am never, and I mean never, coming along with you on an adventure, again.” He told Alexander through his deep calming breaths. “This was the most horrifying, the most dangerous, the most potentially lethal thing I have ever done.”

Alexander started chuckling as he dropped onto the gold next to his former mentor. “Yeah, it was quite an adventure, wasn’t it?”

“That was… that was some amazing teamwork.” Isaac commented. “Lenna, how did you know to be ready for me and the diamond? Karthen, how did you know when to drop the reality cage thing? Alexander, how did you manage to follow Lenna through all the flying debris and gold chunks?”

“I saw the bulge in the gold as you passed back through it and simply got ready. Alexander coordinated the dispelling of the Reality Prison with Karthen.” Lenna explained.

Alexander told his side of it next: “I just used Lady V’Nova as a shield against the debris. I knew that if she couldn’t destroy it in a single hit it would need to be dispelled. I believe I underestimated the toughness of the golem heart. Even if it were made of diamonds, I was sure the diamond would shatter and crack but it must have had some kind of enhancement to prevent that.”

“I was merely doing what Alexander instructed of me until the end.” Karthen explained. “I say again, I am never doing field work again. You may consult me in my tower or my office at the college at any time but I will never go with you to the field.”

Alexander chuckled and laid back on the pile of gold behind him. “Honestly, it is days like today that make me wish I would have just been an adventurer.” He said and then chuckled to himself again. “It is every other day that I remember why I took the opportunity to be a Court Mage. My tower is awesome.”

Isaac laughed as he and Lenna sat down across from the two wizards. “Yeah, it is pretty awesome.” Isaac agreed. “Just imagine if there was an entire magical research station under it that studied anything and everything as long as it posed no risk to innocents and normal people.”

Alexander groaned. “Please do not remind me, I had finally gotten away from her and her insanity.”

“I would ask,” Karthen began. “however, I immediately thought better of it.”