Chapter 59 Unmistakable.

  Isaac sat patiently while his shadows used a pair of wire brushes to help remove the ash from the inside of Shamesh’s ears. He could finally see out of both his death flame eyes but the ash absolutely refused to leave without a fight. “Let’s wait until nightfall and then head back to the fortress.” Isaac told his mate and retainer. Lenna was still effectively blind as her lenses had been melted free of the eye slits and there weren’t enough clouds in the sky to make the daylight even remotely bearable.

  Lenna took a deep relaxing breath and let it out slowly with her eyes closed lazily. “Thank you.” She said and laid back down. “I know you want to return right away, but this fight took a lot out of us.”

  Isaac nodded. “My sword is permanently less efficient, Shamesh’s entire wardrobe is gone, and your entire armor set needs magically put back together. On top of that, there was everything inside of the Bottomless Backpack… damn. This is gonna be expensive.” He grumbled.

  “What about our favors?” Lenna wondered.

  “I think that you should ask for either a new sword or armor.” Isaac told her. “I’m thinking about the same for me or just asking for whichever you don’t for you.”

  “Did you even use the Reality Shield in your bracer?” Lenna questioned her husband pointedly.

  “I completely forgot about it.” He told her. “It would have been a nice defensive measure against the ice feather storm but instead I just took it to the arm and armor.”

  Lenna scowled at him. “I’m glad your hindsight is still as spectacular as ever.” She told him flatly.

  “In my defense, it would have been more or less useless the rest of the time.” Isaac replied with his hands raised.

  Lenna was about to retort something when she suddenly shivered. “Do you feel that?” She asked Isaac with enough seriousness in her voice that he was instantly on high alert.

  “No.” Isaac stated. “What?”

  “It feels chilly.” Lenna commented. “Like nighttime in the desert.”

  Isaac’s eyes narrowed as he looked to the sky. Shamesh followed suit and quickly found what they were looking for. “There.” Shamesh said and pointed up into the sky.

  Isaac couldn’t see what he was pointing at so he fed death flames to his eyes in order to activate his Soul Sight. As all color died and most of the light of the world grew dim, Isaac was nearly blinded by a spectral dragon hovering completely motionless miles into the air. He was like a ghostly sun lording over all of Primatia. “Is that… Gilgamesh?” Isaac wondered.

  “Yes.” Shamesh replied. “That is how I saw him in his office. He is unmistakable.”

  Isaac nodded slowly. “Why is he just hanging around up there?” Isaac asked and then fed death flames into his brain and his brain alone. He steadily ramped up how much power he was burning as the world seemed to slow and his vision became sharper and sharper. His eyes could still only see the same things but his brain was more and more able to process it. “It looks like he’s searching for something.” Isaac said with a frown before he had to return himself to normal speed and repeat himself for Lenna and Shamesh.

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  “It couldn’t be us, could it?” Shamesh wondered. “We are out in the open.”

  Isaac shook his head. “It isn’t.” Isaac told him. “I could have sworn that he looked right at me for a moment there.”

  Isaac frowned in thought and then all of a sudden his knees felt weak. It felt almost like it came out of nowhere. He didn’t know what it was but his Polarity Sense was practically screaming at him. Something was coming and had felt as though it had come into existence from the very ground itself. A monster of unrivalled power. Pure power and little else. The feeling of darkness from it was not one of dark power but of the power of a creature who also happened to be of dark alignment. Then, all of a sudden, it vanished from his Polarity Sense again.

  “W-What was that?” Isaac stammered. Lenna didn’t even get a chance to reply before there was an explosion of dirt only two hundred feet from them, right in the dead center of Jane’s crater.

  Isaac’s eyes were glued to the cloud of dust and flying rocks until he made out a strange shape. As the dust settled, the creature turned to regard them.

  The creature that met Isaac’s eyes was not like anything that he had ever seen before. It had the face of a giant cat with a mane that looked as though each individual strand of hair was made entirely out of one mineral or another. Its mane shimmered in all manners of greys, tans, and even iridescent as it settled into place after the monster’s sudden exit. Its orange slit eyes were three quarters of the way between ‘orb’ and ‘knife edge’. Its long whiskers reminded Isaac of the tentacles of a Falling Shadow, fleshy and covered in a stony skin. Thick muscles bulged under fur, which looked like it was made of tied vines instead of hair, the entire way up and down all six of its legs. Its paws each sported five massive spikes for claws, each one was at least as long as Isaac was tall and just as wide. The claws glinted in the light as if they were made of solid iron. From the base of its neck rearwards there were massive hard plates of stone, each no smaller than six feet across in each direction, covering its back, hips, shoulders, and tail. Its tail was nearly as long as the rest of it, making it well over forty feet long, and also covered completely in the large stone scale-like plates. The main body looked to be closer to fifty feet long and was over twenty feet wide. In all, it was the size of a house for a family of six in Safeharbor, or about the size of the house James and Lenny had claimed.

  Isaac froze as both he and the creature took each other in. He was outclassed. The monster was huge, yes, but with the glimpse of its power that he had felt, and the size of the muscles wrapped tightly under its fur and around its skeleton, Isaac had no doubt that it would be capable of truly explosive speed and power. Lenna was out of her armor, missing a weapon, and more or less blind. Shamesh was low on mana but still had enough to be helpful. Maybe combined they made a whole normal high level combat mage. He was more or less ready to go a few rounds with the mythical creature in front of them but he really didn’t like his odds if it could switch back and forth between light and dark polarities. Maybe if it stayed as a ‘light’ creature, then his death flames could at least be directly effective, even if he doubted he would be able to end it quickly. At the very least this was going to be a multi minute endeavor of dancing with a myth on the point of a knife, he wouldn’t even have the luxury of it being the entire edge.

  The Tarasque, for that was the only thing that it could possibly be, shifted its gaze to Lenna. After it stared at her for a moment, it shifted its gaze to Shamesh. Then, in a blink, the world turned golden.

  Isaac hadn’t even noticed the Guild Leader move. He had been too focused on the Tarasque to notice the massive man in the distance turn into a fifty foot long golden dragon with a wingspan just as wide. The angle of the sun made sure that the massive dragon’s shadow didn’t pass over any of them until after the dragon had. Gilgamesh blazed through the sky so quickly that his wings caught fire even without him expending any mana, the friction of his wings against the air was enough as fire built in his gullet. Isaac didn’t even get a clear look at Gilgamesh through the flames until well after the initial impact.

  Gilgamesh hit the Tarasque like a falling volcano. Isaac and Lenna’s eardrums burst from the shockwave that Gilgamesh brought with him but Isaac was still able to see the impact itself before his body even registered the pain, it happened that incredibly fast. All thirty tons of dragon hit ninety tons of Tarasque with so much force that they were both sent tumbling across the ground in a ball of fire and exploding stone.

  Isaac missed the next moment, as his vision swam and he was forced to send death flames to both his and Lenna’s ears, but Shamesh caught the entire thing. Gilgamesh had grabbed onto the Tarasque with all four of his claws and flipped the much heavier and slightly larger creature over his body and then down again into the ground with so much force that Catastrophe felt another spike in her mana regeneration. As they tumbled, the Tarasque tried to reach its head or claws around to grab or swipe at Gilgamesh but the dragon expertly kept every part of himself just barely out of the Tarasque’s reach. The Tarasque slammed into the ground again, with just as much force as last time, though this time it caught itself with the exposed ground.

  The Tarasque’s armored back was facing upwards and Gilgamesh had all four claws dug solidly into it. Even though they had traversed a quarter of a mile, Gilgamesh hadn’t lost purchase in their tumble. It was there from his triumphant position atop the uninjured but dazed Tarasque, that he finally let loose the dragon’s breath that he had been charging the entire time. Isaac managed to get his eyes back on the fight right as Gilgamesh opened his maw and shifted one of his claws to try and keep the Tarasque’s head still.