Darkness and Hellfire

Isaac's fingers tightened around the mage's neck as his silver eyes locked with the drow's own. There weren't that many drow with silver eyes but the one in his grasp was one of them. Isaac started dumping raw mana directly into the mage in a forced but controlled diffusion of power. The mage writhed in pain as his mana pathways, starting with the ones in his throat, started to break apart from the clashing mana of Isaac's and his own.

The drow mage made a claw with his hand and sparks danced across his fingertips. He slammed his hand into the arm of the hand that was clamped around his throat but could only watch in horror as the lightning did absolutely nothing. The sparks rolled across Isaac's bracer and then vanished into the copper wiring that helped hold Isaac's armor together. The lightning was easily directed straight down into the ground and the drow mage was left in even more of a helpless state than he realized. His fingers danced and five glowing embers formed next to him that quickly streaked towards Isaac's face but Isaac's other hand reached up and swatted them away before it returned to the sword still lodged in the drow mage's kidney, the scales on his bracer radiating heat in all directions. The drow wiggled and squirmed as his voice failed him. He wanted to scream in agony and rage against the man breaking his mana pathways apart but he could do nothing. Soon enough, his mana pathways would leak out all of his mana and his core. His soul would be what leaked out into the endless flow of mana next.

Isaac stopped pouring raw mana into the mage and instead poured death flames which undid all of the damage that the drow had just taken. The drow gasped for air and tried to struggle free of Isaac's grasp but the harder he struggled the harder Isaac clamped his hand around his neck. "Just kill me." The drow mage scowled at Isaac. "I won't tell you anything, no matter what you try to do to me."

"I'll shatter your soul and prevent you from ever reincarnating." Isaac told him in the most disinterested and monotone voice. It was as if Isaac had just told a spider that was living in his house that it had better stay out of sight if it didn't want to be squished.

"Dri'El will protect me!" The mage spat.

"Oh?" Isaac wondered and ripped his sword out of the man's kidney through his side. Blood and guts started to pour out of the massive gaping wound in the mage's side but then the injury was quickly killed by Isaac's death flames. "Can your god do that?" Isaac questioned him mockingly and then cut off the mage's arm only to kill the injury a moment later. The mage's eyes threatened to go completely blank as they rolled back in his head. "Oi!" Isaac yelled at the mage which was just barely enough to keep him from losing consciousness. Isaac's death flames helped the mage return almost completely back to normal within moments so he was no longer at risk of passing out, at least not at that moment.

"Ancestors, he-" The drow mage started but Isaac boosted himself with death flames, while he cut off the mage from them, and then crushed the mage's throat in his hand.

"Stupid bastard." Isaac swore and then sent Truth on a quest to remove the mage's head from his body. Two parts of the mage dropped to the ground at Isaac's feet and he turned to regard the rest of the carnage. Lenna had killed all but the last knight, who had just passed out after three failed attempts to stand.

"They knew that this caravan was coming and where we were." Lenna commented as she stood over the unconscious knight. Isaac's shadows left the man's face so he could finally breathe. He wasn't breathing.

"Agreed." Isaac replied and appeared next to her. He kicked the knight and sent a wave of death flames into him. Almost immediately, the knight started coughing and rolled onto his side gasping for air. "This one had better tell us something, otherwise, I am going to turn his soul into an inside out Bottomless Bag."

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The knight tried to reach for what was left of his sword, which was only a handful of feet away from him, but Lenna focused the entire weight of her aura down onto the man and he practically withered under it like a winter plant under the summer sun. "Don't even think about it." Lenna told him.

"All your friends are dead." Isaac told the knight as he looked down his nose at the prone man. "Some of your people killed some of mine, and I am going to continue slaughtering every drow raiding party until I find the ones that did it. Now, you can help me find them, and then I'll let you go home to your family, or they can mourn you without ever knowing that your soul will never be able to reincarnate." Isaac then leaded down to stare deeply into the drow knight's eyes. "Because I can make sure of that."

"I won't tell you." The knight gasped out. "Do whatever you have to."

Isaac's growl shook the darkness itself as his barely suppressed rage at the loss of his friends was suddenly fed by the echo of rage from Lenna's oath. The comment from the knight to 'do whatever you have to' had been too much. Claus had done what he had to and it had saved Isaac and Lenna's lives, at least according to the future that Aria had foreseen. Isaac boosted himself subconsciously to an unsustainable level. It was the highest he had ever pushed it and he ripped open the knight's breastplate as if the leather straps and hinges were made of paper. One half of the breastplate went flying and obliterated a stalactite before it ricocheted downwards and embedded itself into a stalagmite.

The knight was tossed around like a ragdoll as Isaac ripped his armor and under armor apart like a monster searching for a child in a lonely cabin in the woods. It took Lenna a moment to realize what Isaac was doing and she froze in horror for a long moment.

Isaac drove his fingers into the knight's now bare chest with so much force that they broke his ribs out of the way until he held the man's breastbone like an eagle carrying a fish in its talons. "I am going to blow up your core." Isaac told the knight in no uncertain terms. Isaac's eyes were full of manic fury as they bore into the knight's own. "This is your last chance."

"Isaac…" Lenna whispered from right next to him. He was about to take the afterlife and the infinite amount of potential future lives away from the knight in his clutches and only she could stop him. The question was: Should she? The depths of Lenna's soul recoiled at the thought of an elf being snuffed out for all of time, but he had given the knight a chance, more than one chance actually, and this wasn't even the first of the bunch that he had tried to do it to. This also wasn't extended torture either, as the man would simply cease to exist after a few moments, a minute at most. "… are you sure?" Was all that she could ask him but she already knew his answer. She could feel it in her soul. She could feel the dam that had been broken and the endless torrent of rage and pain that Isaac was about to pour directly into the knight's core, and she could feel the shadow of her oath stoking his fury.

The knight's eyes went wide and they locked onto Lenna's. He was in excruciating pain but he knew that Isaac was serious. "You, would let him do that, to me?" The knight begged Lenna to save him.

Lenna just looked away. "Just answer him, he'll spare you." She told him without looking back.

"Curse you, traitor V'Nova." The knight gasped out through gritted teeth.

Lenna just kept her gaze averted as she felt Isaac's power. She could feel as the enormous mass of mana built and waited in suspense for what Isaac was about to do.

The knight tried to get Isaac off of him but Isaac was as steady as a mountain. The totality of the dark mana around them was under his control and that included the mana within his own body. He was immovable. "Be. Undone." Isaac sneered and then threw everything he had directly into the knight's chest through his five embedded fingers.

Isaac felt the knight's core as his mana forcefully entered it and filled it up like a bucket of oil. The knight's own mana was pushed to the top and then out of him as Isaac's mana continued to force more and more of itself inside of him. The pressure built and built as the man's cry of pure agony echoed throughout the cavern and down all of the connecting tunnels. Then, all at once, his core popped like a bubble. Dark mana blasted outwards in all directions with enough force that the knight's skin was ripped and torn as it forced its way back out into the rest of the world. Isaac's cloak rippled in the breeze of mana as it washed over him and the knight of the V'Nova house was gone forever. It was a 'forever' even more permanent than the loss of his friends.

As Isaac knelt there, next to the soulless corpse of the elf that he had just erased from the cycle, he felt empty inside. All of his feelings that he had forced into the knight's core had been blasted outwards in all directions and he felt this immense relief. He felt tired in his bones, in his heart, in his core, and in the very essence of his soul. Isaac sighed as he no longer wanted to move. He just stayed, on his knees, looking through the knight he had just shattered. It was then, on the edges of his awareness, that he felt something. Something was skirting the edges of where he could perceive and he could feel its hesitation, almost curiosity, as it circled directly below him, multiple miles deep into Primatia. Whatever it was, it was stronger than anything that he had ever faced by raw dark aligned power and level. He wasn't sure if it was a king among Tunnel Horrors or if it was black dragon, but whatever it was, it was now very much aware of where he was and what he was capable of.