Chapter 64 Memories

  “Do one last check of all of the rooms in the building and then we’ll call it and move on to our next objective.” Isaac instructed his retainer and walked over to the dead berserker. “Lenna, can you burn away just the flesh from her skull so I can get direct bone contact?”

  Lenna raised an eyebrow at him but did as he requested via liberal use of the Cone of Flames spell. “Are you really going to try this now, in the city? People will really think that you are a necromancer.” She warned him.

  Isaac shrugged. “Yes and no. I want to see how strong she actually was and how far back in her memories I can go. I’ve never really tried to go back that far. Usually I just let everything play out as it wishes. Shamesh said that she came through the teleportation circle that we think leads to the main CSC base. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some confirmation by desecrating her corpse a bit.” He explained.

  Lenna nodded and stood guard over him as his focus was about to be elsewhere. “Just don’t go trying to fill my role with a corpse.” She joked.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Isaac replied with a smile and placed his hands against the, still scorching hot but freshly dusted off, skull of the berserker that had given Shamesh some trouble. Isaac’s power and mind plunged into the ‘armor of the mind’ of the fallen berserker. He pushed with his mind and intent towards where he felt was farther back in her memories.

  —

  “Do we really have to go now?” A man, whose face was blurry and his features were indistinct, asked her. It wasn’t clear if the reason for the blurriness was due to how little she cared about him or from how far back Isaac was trying to go into her final moments.

  “The boss said that something didn’t feel right. Are you going to tell that maniac to wait?” The berserker retorted. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “I’m with Gretta, the sooner we figure out what’s botherin’ the boss, the sooner I can go back to bed. I got drug outta bed for this.” A second indistinct person added to the conversation.

  The room that they were in was blurry except for a small handful of things. The first was the teleportation circle that was already starting to glow. The second was the large purple dragon that was painted on the wall. The third was a small arrow-slit-like window. And finally there was the overbearing scent of sea salt.

  The berserker, Gretta apparently, stopped in the middle of the circle and put her hands on her hips. “Let’s just get this done.” She spoke. It was clear from the way that she carried herself, and the fact that her two companions flanked her on either side, that she was the boss, or at least the most important member of the group. She nodded towards a fourth person that was kneeling next to the teleportation circle with their hands just barely touching the ritual itself. A final push of power was sent into the ritual and then they were gone. The teleportation wasn’t quite instantaneous but it was close. During that small instance of time where they were nowhere, Gretta’s skin prickled as if she was in imminent danger. She just brushed it off as the teleportation screwing with her instincts, again, but as soon as they arrived at their destination, all hells broke loose.

  There was a flash of orange, yellow, and red, as a fireball, the size of the room that they now found themselves in, exploded right behind her and between her two tag-a-longs. Gretta was thrown to the floor with enough force that her nose bounced off the stone ground. The impact hadn’t phased her in the slightest but she had been taken by surprise. She pushed herself up to her feet as a thought went through her mind: ‘The boss has never been wrong before, I should have seen this coming.’ She took a quick glance around and saw that her two companions were utterly obliterated and she couldn’t help but sigh internally.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  She was about to start looking for whoever had set the trap when the hairs on the back of her neck all stood on end at once. She felt a chill in the air and could smell the scent of death. It wasn’t the smell of the pair of charred and obliterated corpses nearby but the ‘scent of the end’. It was a smell that she reveled in. A smell that she could only ever find on the battlefield or during a monster attack. She got goosebumps all up and down her arms as she felt the presence of something beyond mortality.

  Gretta’s eyes were drawn towards an open space in front of her right before a scattering of orange dots formed in the air. Each of them launched into her with surprising speed but absolutely no force. She looked quizzically at the space where the little embers had come from for a moment before she felt danger coming.

  Sparks started to form in mid air as time seemed to slow. Everything that wasn’t necessary for mortal combat was shut down. Her internal monologue was silenced as was her sense of taste and even her ability to sense any other presence other than that of her target. She was completely honed in on the feeling that comes when a mortal’s life is about to end. A lightning bolt formed and slammed into her as her mind was switching off and into the ‘berserker rage’. The term ‘berserker rage’ was misleading, she wasn’t angry, she wasn’t full of wrath, nor was she on a quest for destruction or vengeance, no, it was the opposite. Gretta was utterly elated.

  —

  As Isaac watched Gretta’s memories, of the battle against Shamesh, he realized something: Even after her heart had been crushed, even after she had been caged and forced to break out, even after Shamesh had started shaking her up and down like a baby with a rattle, she had never once lost that feeling of total elation. By the time it was over, she hadn’t even realized it. She was so completely ready to continue their game of cat and mouse when everything just abruptly stopped. It was such a jarring experience that Isaac physically recoiled once it was done.

  “You okay?” Lenna questioned her husband. His journeys into the minds of the fallen always left him slightly ‘off’. Dying was a disconcerting experience and Isaac knew that better than most. Lenna knew that Isaac had experienced it more times than anyone else that she knew and that was actually what worried her. She was afraid that one of these times, Isaac was going to forget that he wasn’t in someone else’s final moments, that he would think that once it was over he would just wake back up again. He already had ‘self preservation issues’ and him thinking that none of it was real would only exacerbate them.

  Isaac blinked a few times to get used to his own eyes again. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He told her. “I am almost completely positive that the teleportation circle that she used goes straight to the CSC island. The smell of the sea was far stronger than even on the coast. It was like everything was coated in a fine film of sea salt, though, now that I think about it, that might’ve just been her heightened senses. Berserkers honestly don’t feel mortal. Shaeohanna felt more like you or me than Gretta did.”

  Lenna’s brows furrowed and she knelt down next to Isaac. She grabbed the woman’s belt and yanked it to the side so it would shift enough for her to see what had been hidden. Lenna audibly gasped at what she saw and Isaac’s eyes went wide once he noticed it too.

  “Oh, that’s not good.” Isaac said both to himself and to his wife.

  “No, it is not.” Lenna agreed as she yanked the double platinum adventurer tags off of the woman’s belt. “I hope our new friend takes it well.”

  “If he doesn’t, well, this could get a lot messier.” Isaac grumbled.

  “Let’s bring her body back to the Adventurers’ Guild. Before we do that though, we should see to our prisoners.” She reminded him.

  “This floor is entirely clear.” Shamesh informed them with a bow. “There was someone hiding but as soon as I arrived they attempted to stab me.”

  “I see.” Isaac replied. “Good work.” Isaac had lost focus on Shamesh’s shadow-cloak once his mind had delved into Gretta’s last moments which had left him vulnerable. Isaac shrouded his retainer in shadows once again and gave Lenna some as well so she could see and hear the retainer.

  “I am afraid that I damaged the teleportation circles to ensure that more reinforcements would not arrive. I do not know if they will be fixable so I damaged them as little as possible.” Shamesh confessed.

  “That’s fine.” Isaac told him. “If we have to get someone to help get the teleportation circles working again then we will. Getting rid of them before they could become even more of a problem was the right move. I just hope that no one on the other side will find out for a while.”

  “Agreed.” Lenna added. “Don’t worry about it.” She told Shamesh with a soft smile.

  Isaac dusted himself off and then locked eyes with Lenna. “Now that we are done here, it’s time for my favorite part that can very quickly become my least favorite.” He told her.

  “For someone as dramatic as you that is also almost entirely apathetic to others’ suffering, that makes sense.” Lenna thought aloud. “Questioning can be fun from time to time, but torture never is.”