Chapter 95 A Dragon’s Roar.
Isaac continued kiting Jallen V’Nova around the battlefield while trying to come up with a way to get through his nigh invulnerable armor and perfect defenses. Jallen’s sword flew back into his hand without ever touching the ground as if it were a boomerang and Jallen used its momentum as he jumped forwards at Isaac. The sword yanked him towards the mage and Isaac was forced to teleport out of the way of the instant death that would’ve been Jallen’s crushing overhead blow. Jallen whirled on him and continued pressing the mage relentlessly as another thunderclap rang out and Isaac watched the lightning fizzle out a few feet from Jallen’s side. He caught Kahtesh collapsing out of the corner of his eye.
The dark mage felt the world suddenly speed up and he suddenly felt eighty pounds lighter. He tripped as he was retreating from the enraged paladin of legend that was hellsbent removing from him Primatia, permanently. Isaac’s foot hit the ground with his leg entirely extended and his knee locked, throwing him off balance. Jallen’s sword was flung at Isaac too quickly for him to react through his disorientation at the sudden lack of Quicken. It crossed the ten feet between them in a brilliant blink and slammed into his chest. At the same time he felt the tether between him and Kahtesh stop drawing mana. Kahtesh was dead. Isaac might’ve been actually angry about that fact if it wasn’t for the fact that the dragon was still mostly intact and he knew that he could just put him back together, if he survived the hit from Jallen that was.
Jallen’s sword immediately went dull as all of the radiant light was converted into searing heat and pain while being directly imparted into Isaac. The Amulet of the Hero around his neck shone with blinding white light as it tried its best to stop the attack entirely. The weapon impacted Isaac’s chest sideways but the sword was not what was meant to kill him. There had been enough power in that attack to remove him from existence entirely. The Gambeson of the Guarded Soul tried its best to absorb a bit more of the lethal attack but the best it could do was keep the sword from cleaving through him. Isaac felt his entire chest and his left arm, that had been clipped by the edge of the blade near its tip, burn away to ash in an instant. The top half of his torso was mana pathways and little else.
Isaac could almost feel his legs being left behind as his left arm was in a freefall. A chunk of his reserves were immediately consumed as a ripple of power washed out of him in a wave that forced back Jallen’s aura as if it were a canoe in a thunderstorm on the ocean. Death flames extinguished themselves to ‘kill’ the damage that he had just received. Isaac’s reserves were halved in that instant. As the dark mage’s armor was thrown backwards, from the sword’s impact with him, his legs, head, and the bottom half of his arm were tugged along by fragments of bone, muscle, tendon, and skin that had already started to reform. Isaac hit the ground hard and tumbled, feeling his healing get interrupted again and again by the hard impacts, before he finally stopped face down on the cold stone. A second later he took a deep breath in his new lungs for the first time.
“Ow.” Isaac breathed out while he slowly moved his hands under his shoulders to push himself up. He had almost blacked out from the sudden shock of pain but it seemed like the more times he had experienced the loss of body parts the better he was at handling it. Isaac shook his head to clear it as he pushed himself up onto his knees. He looked over at Jallen right as the paladin came back to his senses.
Jallen had never experienced his aura being tossed back into his face like the child’s sword in a sparring ring. He felt a ripple of what could have been fear resonate through his chest before his aura naturally rebuffed it. Jallen had no idea what the creature in front of him was but he did know that it wasn’t human. No human had that kind of power. He felt no divinity from him either which ruled out a demigod showing up to try and bully him. His brain started working again as the creature of shadow and death locked its silver eyes with his. It was still on its knees and Jallen wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to try and end it for good. He was running out of mana and could only pray to Dri’El that the creature in front of him couldn’t tell through his legendary armor. A thought went through Jallen’s mind as he charged at Isaac: ‘Who am I kidding? With that much power he knows exactly how empty I am.’
Jallen’s sword flew into his hand and he brought it down in a quick chop towards Isaac’s head but all he hit was a fading black silhouette, again. He spun around just in time to see Isaac’s feet touch the ground. He had teleported thirty feet away and a few feet into the air so his legs had enough time to extend into a standing position. “You know,-” Isaac began but was cut off.
“Send me back.” The last of the specters ordered Jallen. “What you have angered, descendent, is not something for the living or dead to deal with.” Jallen threw the specter an annoyed glance. “I will not aid you further.” Jallen cut the power flowing to maintain the summon and the specter was banished back to whence he had come.
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“Useless bastards.” Jallen muttered.
“As I was saying before your grandpa decided to go home and rest,” Isaac began again. “that was the hardest I have ever been hit, bravo.” He said and started clapping slowly. A void opened up behind him and the unanimated bones of his favorite skeleton sank into it before vanishing beneath the surface. “You are quite strong, for a mortal.” Isaac commented and took off the amulet of the hero and tossed it into his Inventory.
“What are you?” Jallen demanded and started to circle Isaac. If a spirit was afraid of what Isaac was then Jallen was going to be more careful. The feeling he got from his opponent suddenly changed. Isaac had gone from an assassin on the back foot to a god preparing to gift a mortal with the ability to witness their full power.
“That is a good question.” Isaac replied as Jallen continued to circle closer. “The general consensus is a demigod who hasn’t hit the threshold yet.” Isaac shrugged. “I might be a dragon who likes to play at being a human though, who knows?”
Jallen stopped in his tracks. Everything was starting to make sense. Way, way too much sense. Black dragons were known for being solitary and ruthless but if one decided to run against the grain, join the humans for the sake of entertainment, learn some mortal magic without ever leaving a territory he was comfortable in… “I wasn’t expecting to kill another dragon today.” Jallen commented and readied himself to charge at Isaac. If Isaac actually was a black dragon then he needed to end him instantly. With a dragon’s level of mana regeneration he would never run out as long as he yet drew breath. Jallen would have to remove his head. The only other way he knew how to kill a black dragon was with an antimagic field but with the sorceress gone and no high level wizards around that option was out of reach.
Isaac pulled a potion out of the air. The vial was small and he easily flicked the top off with his thumb. Jallen launched himself at Isaac but Isaac had the potion vial empty before Jallen could cover the twenty remaining feet between them. Isaac jumped back as he started to feel a burning sensation travel through him. The feeling radiated from everywhere the liquid touched. His mana pathways tingled with the strange power flowing through them but the rest of his body burned as if there was too much of something being forced inside of it. Isaac then felt his body start to break down from the strange power. “It’s time.” Isaac said as he touched the ground again and grinned at Jallen.
Isaac’s boost spiked as he cut off the flow of power going to maintain the drider skeleton back at the main battle line. All of his regeneration went into his boost which lost some power as it put his body back together but it was enough. Isaac threw a handful of his shadow orb spawning darts in front of Jallen and the paladin instinctively tried to jump back. On impact the darts exploded in shadows and Isaac launched himself through the shadows at the blinded Jallen before he could crush them with his aura. Jallen swung at Isaac but instead of dodging or blocking the attack Isaac teleported two feet further forwards. Isaac grabbed Jallen’s wrist with one hand while he drove his other’s fist into the paladin’s head so hard a sound like shattering glass rippled across the mana in the area as the paladin’s neck bent almost to an unnatural angle before abruptly stopping.
Isaac kneed Jallen between the legs which launched him into the air but Isaac still held his wrist firmly in his grasp. Isaac turned and threw Jallen over his shoulder into the stone. That hit hadn’t been hard enough to kill the paladin else the sound of breaking glass would have been heard again. ‘Fine.’ Isaac thought. ‘If I act like a dragon, have powers like a dragon, then it’s about time I start fighting like a damned dragon.’ Isaac turned again and launched Jallen towards the nearest wagon a dozen yards away. “HHHAAAAAAAA!” Isaac bellowed as he threw every ounce of inhuman strength he had into the spinning throw. Jallen’s wrist, elbow, shoulder, and some of his vertebrae broke with the strain of getting spun and thrown with such force. Jallen impacted the side of the wagon and it toppled over despite the hundreds of pounds of medical gear inside.
Isaac was tossed in the opposite direction as Jallen from his throw and his boots scraped across the stone as he tried to slow himself. He heard the sound of breaking glass again and knew what he had to do. It was time to break every one of Jallen’s ‘cheat death’ items in rapid succession until the bastard finally died for real.
—
The massive pulse of death that rippled through the mana of the world brought every mana sensitive person in Safeharbor to a standstill and every other individual was brought to a cold sweat. The battle line seemed to hitch as the feeling of power from Isaac hit them from at least half a mile away as if they were standing next to him. Every available eye turned to face where the power had come from only for the power to vanish an instant later.
Lenna and Macken were shocked out of their brawl by the ripple of power with a hand on each other’s faces and the other raised to trade blows. “Isaac.” Lenna spoke. They both were frozen and breathing heavily until the sound of the collapsing drider skeleton drew both of their attention. “No, no, no, Isaac.” Lenna spoke in a panic before she turned towards where Isaac and presumably Jallen were.
An inhuman roar resounded through the almost dead silent cavern as the faintest whisper of the wave of death from before was carried along with it. The impact of the roar hit all of those with mana pools before the sound did. The larger the mana pool the harsher the feeling of concentrated effort and bloodlust hit them. It was a feeling that only a handful of those present had experienced up close but every drow there had felt from a far at least once.
“A dragon’s roar.” Fable spoke with worry on his face.
“Indeed.” Edward said. “It appears our demigod has had to work for his pay.”
“That’s…” Esk’s voice trailed off.
Lenna’s grin caught Macken by surprise. “My mate.” She said and focused herself back on Macken. “Last chance, old friend.” She offered the paladin in her grasp as another roar rang and rippled out. “Surrender or die.”