Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 14 Not My Subjects.


Lua shone her light down on the Altian mountain range as sporadic clouds drifted between the mortals and the stars. Crickets chirped and nocturnal scavengers and prey animals came out to find things to eat. There were no large predators left on the part of the mountain range between Altesia and Alten so the rabbits, groundhogs, racoons, opossums, and mice were free to take whatever they could get ahold of. One of the scouts from each group was awake and kept watch during the middle of the night so Isaac and Lenna technically didn't have too. That didn't keep the pair of them from enjoying the campfire and fresh winter air on the mountain. They had risen above the smells of the large amounts of people and animals in and around the city. There was still an inescapable scent of horses but that was just a part of traveling. It was a peaceful night beneath Lua's light, until it wasn't.

Isaac sat up from where he was laying on a blanket staring up at the moon by the fire. Lenna immediately did the same and her body language shifted from relaxed to absolutely combat ready in a blink. Their movements and the sudden shift in atmosphere were so abrupt that both scouts brought their eyes from scanning their surroundings to staring at them at the same time. "What is it?" Lenna asked her husband and grabbed her sword that was laying on the ground next to her.

"Something is out there." Isaac replied and stood up at a deliberately casual pace. He slowly turned and looked in the direction that he felt whatever it was. "Weak, but not too weak. Dead, but not dead enough. Multiple, but not many." He spoke aloud what his Polarity Sense was giving him.

"That's bloody helpful." The one scout grumbled under her breath.

The other scout shrugged to his temporary companion. "It's better than what we had." He offered her.

"Well, oh great Lord of Darkness, what is the plan?" The female scout asked with obvious dramatics.

Isaac looked at her. "I am not getting paid to protect this caravan." He told her simply. "Gather your team and deal with it yourselves. Surely you can deal with some low level undead?"

"You won't get upset that we killed one of your subjects?" She prodded. She had barely gotten the word out before her face paled and her entire body was covered in cold sweat.

Isaac went through the motions of shadow-stepping but then didn't. Instead, when his entire body was covered in a thin but dense layer of shadows, he turned it directly into death flames. What the scouts and Lenna saw was Isaac's entire body turn into dripping black fire. He looked like a man on fire, who was standing on the ceiling, while brightness and darkness were inverted. With the dark backdrop of sparse trees and rocky cliffs of the Altian Mountain Range behind him, Isaac looked like a nightmare given form only because he had been caught in the flickering firelight of the campfire. His looks only served to multiply what had really caused both scouts to nearly soil themselves, the feeling of the death flames themselves. Isaac let the flames fade away naturally over the course of the next second and then just continued to stare down the scout for a moment longer.

"Undead, are not, my subjects." Isaac stated as the fact that it truly was. "The bone golems that have been seen in my service are powered by my soul directly. They are parts of me. The undead are corrupted abominations of reality that should be purged." Isaac finished his explanation and then looked down his nose at the scout that had thought to make a mockery of him. "Now, do your jobs."

Both scouts nodded and hurried to fetch their party members who were all already awake or in the middle of some of the worst nightmares they had ever had.

By the time the larger party was ready to head out to deal with the nearby threat, the undead's number had increased towards around a dozen and they had gotten close enough that Isaac, and the elves in the groups, could see them meandering up a small path towards their camp.

"How do you want to do this?" A warrior asked the rest of his party.

"I don't know." The wizard replied. "They don't look strong but there are quite a few of them. We can try to pick some of them off before they get too close?"

The group went on for nearly two minutes before Isaac had enough. They weren't getting anywhere and looked entirely out of their depth with even simple tasks. "What is your problem?" Isaac eventually quietly snapped at them. "It is just a few undead, go kill them. Aren't you all at least level seven? I could have killed them all by myself at level three."

The group fell silent at the sudden reprimand. "It is hard to fight in the dark-" The warrior that had first spoken began.

"For most of your group, sure, but not for the archer." Isaac countered immediately. The second warrior was an elven archer who looked taken aback at having been directly called out. "Just end them already."

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"Lord of Darkness, can we just handle it?" One of the rangers from the other group asked. "We are more accustomed to fighting in the dark. That group is used to fighting people."

"Undead are people enough." Isaac countered. "But no, you may not. It is about the principle of it at this point." He then whirled back around to the group of four that were struggling with a silver tier bounty's worth of difficulty. "Archer, hit the zombie in the back with an arrow once he has walked another seven feet forwards." Isaac ordered him. "Wizard, once the arrow has landed, fire seven Stars of Doom in a line along the cliff right next to them, three feet down from the top edge. After that, hit the line you just made with a spell that has real impact."

"I have a spell that can launch objects, will that work?" The wizard asked with wide and slightly frightened eyes. The fact that she hadn't hesitated to ask was a good sign.

"It will, as long as you hit it with something hard and dense." Isaac agreed and then turned back to the archer. "Get ready to shoot." He ordered him.

The archer wrinkled his nose at being ordered around but did as he was told. "When should I even fire?" He asked Isaac with too much attitude.

"Now." The scout told him. "Shoot now!" She snapped as quietly as she could and he quickly focused in on the target and took a shot.

"Stars of Doom heed my call." The wizard chanted and poured as much of her power into it as she could which caused seven small orbs to form around the end of her outstretched staff. Each one quickly fired off and hit close enough to where Isaac had told her. The zombies all turned around to see the one that had gotten hit with the arrow but when they only noticed each other, they started to turn back around, only for a few flashy impacts to hit the wall just above their head height on the cliff next to them. "The first weapon was but a rock thrown with intent." She spoke as she cast another spell and flicked the end of her staff towards where she had hit with the Stars of Doom. A rock around the size of her head launched from the ground nearby into the weakened section of brittle stone. The rock burst apart but the cliff face didn't break. She looked back to Isaac with wide eyes.

"Hit it again, still along the line but try a different spot." He directed her.

She quickly nodded and chanted the spell again: "The first weapon was but a rock thrown with intent." Another chunk of stone was sent flying from the ground nearby, this one was much more square than the last and hit the cliff just right. The small cliff fractured along the line that the Stars of Doom had made and around a ton of stone broke off and dropped down on the small cluster of zombies. All but two of them were crushed under the rubble but only three of them were actually unanimated by it.

"Now, Archer, continue firing at the ones that are not trapped. Swordsman, intercept any of them that come this way. Scout, you should've been the one to come up with a plan. You and the archer are the weakest in a straight up fight but at least the archer can kill weaker things or strike at vital points at a safe distance. You need to use your mind to be useful." Isaac instructed them. He then turned to the mage. "You did well, but we both know that there was a better way for you to deal with a small group of zombies like that, isn't there?"

The wizard nodded. "Yes." She agreed.

"What is it?" Isaac asked her. He thought that the obvious answer was Firebal-

"I don't know." The wizard replied honestly with such pure innocence that Isaac was at a loss on how to deal with her. He wanted to call her an idiot but she was giving him such huge lost puppy eyes that he just hitched for a moment.

"Fireball." Lenna cut in and saved him. "Gate of Flames might be a bit high of a level spell for you but it would work well too. Any area of effect spell with decent damage potential would probably have worked."

"I don't know how to cast Fireball." The wizard told them with the same pure earnestness and honesty as before.

Isaac couldn't help himself and literally facepalmed in front of them. "You need to learn the most common and basic attack, defense, and utility spells. They are common because they are useful not just because they are cool." Isaac explained.

"I want to be a reality mage." She told him. "Any spells that don't involve that line of study were left behind in pursuit of real world bending magic!" She exclaimed. It was obvious that she was both proud of her chosen course of study and of her previous choices.

"Name one spell of each of the nine levels that classifies as a reality spell." Isaac instructed her.

"Stars of Doom, Quickstep, Reality Bind, Lesser Teleportation, Telekinesis, Disintegrate, Greater Teleportation, Anti-Magic Field, Time Stop." The wizard rattled off without even the slightest hesitation.

Isaac sighed. "Fine. Why don't you create a decent area of effect reality spell to make up for your obvious lack of wide range damage? If you did that, then you would be a lot more helpful for your team." He informed her. A mage's main job in a group was to handle large numbers of weak enemies and counter other mages.

"I'll do that." The wizard told him. "One day." She promised. "And I'll have a cool name like the rest of the high ranking adventurers."

"Good energy." Lenna complimented her. "But now, it looks like your party could use some help." She informed the young wizard who turned around to see the Warrior and rogue trying hard not to get clawed, scratched, or bitten by the wounded zombies.

"How should I help them?" The wizard asked Lenna.

"Stars of Doom to the back of the neck should suffice." Lenna informed her. "But if you are going to continue adventuring, you are going to need to be able to figure that out yourself."

The wizard frowned in thought for a moment before a swear from one of her party members yanked her attention back to the target at hand. She took one quick breath to help herself focus and then started firing Stars of Doom at the stationary and party crushed zombies. She targeted the back of the neck if she could see it, but if she couldn't, she fired one anyway and let her team figure out how to finish it off. By the time she was done, she was panting at the magical effort. She still had some mana left but she had used most of it.

The group finished dealing with the last of the threats and then Isaac summoned Shamesh. Plenty of eyes were locked onto the bone golem retainer as he bowed towards Isaac and greeted the duo. "Send a message to Nacen and inform him of the zombie sighting, Cain too if you can." Isaac instructed Shamesh.

"I am afraid that I was never close enough to Guild Master Cain to have an accurate feel of his mana signature. Archmagus Nacen is well within my capabilities however." Shamesh informed him.

"That's fine." Isaac replied.

Shamesh nodded and got to work. Once he was done he turned back to Isaac. "It is done. He seemed… unhappy." Shamesh explained.

Isaac raised an eyebrow. "Why?" He wondered.

"Because Shamesh woke him up." Lenna explained the obvious.

"Yes." Shamesh agreed. "And he seemed indignant at being telepathically contacted by someone that he had not given express permission to do so."

Isaac rolled his eyes. "If he and Cain had just finished off the corrupted child making a mockery of the dead already, then we wouldn't need to inform him of the undead sighting." He shook his head. "Whatever. They had better get rid of the necromancer before we return. The surface is their territory."

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