Chapter 85 Why Am I Dying?

  Isaac remembered being flung into the air amid a hail of shrapnel. He distinctly remembered feeling his amulet activate to prevent him from dying instantly. The next thing he remembered was a meeting that he had really hoped to avoid.

  —

  Shamesh hadn’t even had enough time to throw up a Reality Shield before he was catapulted away from the center of the building and directly into the wall. He had seen the wall coming for an instant but he was not a true master of the arcane. Perhaps a real maximum level wizard would’ve been able to cast a spell in that brief instant but Shamesh lacked the spell casting muscle memory necessary to pull something like that off.

  In hindsight, the only reason that he was intact enough to even see the wall coming was because he was not as close to the blast as his master and mistress. If he had joined his master at the same time as his mistress, his skull would’ve been blown apart and he would have truly died his final death. Shamesh would’ve been gone. Isaac would’ve had to create a new physical shadow, but it wouldn’t have any of the memories or the budding personality.

  What would Isaac have chosen if Shamesh had truly died there? Would he go back and reform Kahtesh, a new Kahtesh, an ignorant and blank Kahtesh like from the early days? None of that truly mattered though as Shamesh hadn’t been entirely blasted apart.

  Shamesh hit the wall hands first in an effort to keep his head from breaking apart on impact. His bones shattered as they had already been chipped and fractured from the explosion and resulting shrapnel. His arms broke apart from fingers to shoulders as he tried to slow his momentum. It worked enough that his face only bounced off of the wall instead of shattering against it. As he fell backwards towards the ground amid raining shrapnel, his consciousness started to fade. He only had enough time for one thought before everything went dark: ‘Why am I dying?’

  —

  Lenna knew that it was coming, but a quarter of a second wasn’t long enough for her to warn either of her companions, though, truth be told, she hadn’t even thought about Shamesh.

  Lenna’s head was turned towards Isaac just enough to prevent wood and silver shrapnel from using her helmet’s eye slits as target practice. That was the luckiest part of the entire encounter. She had been off balance when the shockwave hit her as she had tried to pick her foot back up to prevent the trap from activating. If Isaac’s shadows had still been around her boots, the trap wouldn’t have even gone off. The reason that it hadn’t gone off when Isaac was standing right on top of the pressure plate was because the shadow of his real weight wasn’t enough to depress it. When the pair had gotten blown up, only a few minutes prior, Isaac’s concentration had been broken. The shadows that he had given her had also been blasted away by the Fireball so even if he had somehow maintained his concentration, there wouldn’t have been any shadows left to concentrate on. The duo’s, mostly Isaac’s, string of minor mess ups was assaulting them with very major repercussions.

  The distinctly non-magical blast threatened to wrest Lenna’s limbs from their joints as it impacted her. The worst was her neck. Lenna felt like her head was trying to pop off of her body by rolling backwards behind her back. Her armor helped but it was designed with freedom of movement in mind, which usually didn’t matter, but when faced with only the gods knew how much blasting jelly, some extra support would’ve been nice. She had no way of knowing exactly how bad her internal injuries were before she impacted the wooden wall with enough force to break it. Her eardrums were ruptured for sure, her neck had probably broken or at the very least it was heavily sprained. She honestly had no idea because she was barely conscious.

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  Lenna shouldn’t have been conscious. No one with the kinds of injuries she had should’ve been. None of that mattered to her, however. Lenna’s power flared even as she fell out of the crater she had made in the wall. She landed on her feet but her legs did nothing to prevent her from crumpling to the ground. Her body drank up her mana like a dehydrated man in the desert. Her world was clouded in pain that shot through her body in crisscrossing lightning bolts of agony. Her brain stopped even assigning the pain to where it had come from and just screamed for her to let it rest.

  Lenna had no idea how long it had taken for her mana to put her back together but it was far too long. She needed rest. Real rest. Her brain needed time to go through the cycle of consciousness to unconsciousness and back again. She couldn’t let it. Lenna, by some miracle, managed to get her hands and knees under herself. Everything was foggy and the world was still tilting but some part of her refused to use the last of her mana to try and fix it. She looked to the side and through her cracked lenses she could see a black form laying on the ground a few feet away from her.

  “Is-” She croaked out and crawled over to him as fast as she could. As fast as she could was still far too slow.

  When she got to him she realized that he was face down. The first thing she looked for was shadows. The shadows had always tried to keep him alive before. She hoped, she begged Fate and Mana, that the reason why there weren’t any visible shadows clinging to him was because he was okay.

  “Isaac.” Lenna forced out and grabbed his arm. It was twisted in an unnatural direction and she could see the bone sticking out through the inside of the elbow. “Isaac.” She pleaded and fed him some of her healing mana. She felt nothing. “Isaac!” She cried out despite her voice’s painful protests.

  Lenna momentarily stopped breathing as she stared down at her husband through her cracked lenses that had been their wedding gift. “No.” She declared. She had no way of knowing how long it had been since he had died, but as long as it had been less than sixty seconds, she could bring him back. She needed to bring him back. Sixty seconds was how long the Reaper gave mortals to bring each other back before he would take their souls to their next destinations.

  Lenna forced all of her mana out of herself and into her husband despite the fact that his body had died. “Lua! Halya! Rei! Zei! Help me!” She demanded from the god and goddesses that watched over him. “Oh strand of fate I beseech thee! Let not this mortal be set free! His soul the Reaper must not steal. Please oh please reconnect and heal.” Lenna’s voice may have started as a bellow but by the end she was pleading through pouring tears.

  As her mana started bottoming out, as the last drop was wrung from her body, as she began trying to fuel her healing with the power of her aura even though she knew it wouldn’t work… something changed. Lenna had never seen colors before. She always heard people talk about them, but without being able to see them for herself, it was impossible for her to truly understand what others were talking about. For a moment, only a brief few seconds, Lenna’s soul saw the colors of things that she couldn’t even begin to understand. Two Indigo, one Sunlight Yellow, and one Moonlight Silver streak of power began swirling around her and Isaac’s body. One long ribbon of each color did one lap around them before they all abruptly changed directions and then lanced into Isaac’s back.

  Lenna was able to see a flicker of her own power, the burnt orange color of her soul, for a brief moment as the four ribbons of divine power joined what she had started. Isaac’s body rattled and shook as his bones were forcefully put back in place and his organs were being stitched back together. After a few seconds, the divine colors started to dim and the ribbons reached their ends. Lenna started to panic as the four sparks of power, from the five beings that wanted him to succeed and thrive more than anyone else, ran out of power and started to dim. “No.” Lenna begged. “Plea-” Lenna’s voice died in her throat as the entire world around her turned black.

  Lenna could see nothing but what she felt was something she would never forget. She felt like an all devouring void was staring intently at her. Like an endless drop into an infinite abyss had just formed under her but wasn’t sure if it wanted to let her fall in or not. Like a gate to purgatory had swung wide right next to her. Like she had been brought to the far end of creation, of existence. Like she wasn’t supposed to be there. It was almost as if Isaac’s death flames were just a tiny fragment of the edge of the universe that he was allowed to use, but what was around them was the real thing. A blink later and it was all gone. She heard a cough next to her as her mind and body finally gave out and she collapsed. “Thank you.” She whispered before unconsciousness took her.

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler