Vizjerei, the old fashioned hero Diablo/MHA

[Magikuser]

Chapter 1:
Quirky Accident1

"Whoa! The freaking thing is gone!" Bakugo exclaimed as the desk, metal legs and all, vanished entirely.

The pile of books, stationeries and notebooks inside of the desk fell to the ground with it's support gone.

"But where are they going?" Midoriya asked. "You're not making them vanish completely. You can't. It's already been proven that quirks still don't break the laws of conservation of mass. Can't create or destroy energy or matter. So is it a warp ability, or…"
As his train of thought went down its usual rabbit hole he continued his normal habit of getting quieter and quieter until his mumbling filled the room.

This mumbling stopped when Tsubasa smacked him on the back of his head with one of his wings.

"Geez, nerd." Bakugo groused with his usual disgusted face. "Why does it matter what new kids quirk actually does, doesn't make it less cool."

"Hey! You kids! Don't do that!" The teacher yelled from across the room, finally looking up from her lunch at the clattering of school supplies. "That's school property!"
She groaned and came over to check on them.

"Please tell me your quirk is that you can make objects invisible or something, I don't want to have to fill out another incident report about property damage today." She complained, but when she got over to them it was abundantly clear that the desk was, indeed, gone. "Okay. Okay! I'm going to leave you kids alone for a few minutes, I have to go grab a new desk for you. Just… don't disappear anything important while I'm gone, okay?"

Midoriya was still recoiling from the emotional roller coaster from thinking that, for once, the teacher was going to stop the bullying for his benefit, to disappointment at the greater concern for the well being of a desk, to fear at the thought of being left completely alone. Without adult supervision. In a room full of other ten year old children with quirks and not having one himself. It was never a good recipe.
As soon as the door clicked Bakugo and his gang turned right on him with their usual glee.

"Let's have new kid try it out on you." Bakugo said.
Midoriya knew Kaa-chan well enough to know that he was joking, in his cruel and intimidating way. Because he thought it was funny to see "Deku" wet himself. Something most classmates seemed to relate to.

But when everyone jumped on the suggestion without a shred of irony or hesitance things got scarier than even Bakugo could have planned.

"Yeah! You heard him. We know it's not actually destroying anything. Sending it somewhere else. He's the one who wants to know where it goes. Easy way to find out." Tsubasa said."And besides. She said not to vanish anything important."
"Quirkless over here doesn't qualify." Another student added.
Midoriya saw the panic he felt mirrored on Bakugo's face
Then somebody, Midoriya couldn't tell for certain whom, pushed him from behind towards new kid.
"Wait… you can't be..." Bakugo said.

And in that moment of panic, with the new kid putting his hands up in a protective motion and Midoriya screaming, so much happened at once that he would never be able to really tell what had happened.

Bakugo had exploded, literally, at both Midoriya and the new kid to try and stop this catastrophe from happening. But happen it did and, presumably in his own panic, new kid must have vanished Midoriya.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. No light or color in his eyes, no whooshing of wind in his ears, no hot or cold on his skin. He was moving through absolute nothingness. A void as infinite as space itself, but infinitely more empty.

And yet somehow he knew, he was moving. Being pulled, no, yanked violently towards something he didn't know and wouldn't like. The sensation of falling forward, dragged by the scruff unwillingly, was all his mind and body knew.
And then, splash.

The abject lack of sensation was all too suddenly replaced with an overabundance of sensation.
Too much light in his eyes, too much cold in his wet clothes and WAY too much stench in his nose.
He had landed in a pool of thick, rancid water with who-knows-what clumped together in congealed mould of organic matter seeping into every loose article of clothing.
It was actually dark out, early evening beneath a blue sky with the first stars starting to peak through the dusk. But the contrast with the complete blackness he had just come from made it seem as bright as the pearly gates themselves.
"Ack! Guh!" He gasped and chokes as he tried to spit out whatever amount of the foulness he had swallowed and, worse, had shoot up his nose.

The best solution he came up with was to literally blow his nose into his hand and that finally did the trick. Unfortunately his first instinct after that was to try and catch his breath with a deep breath of not-so-fresh air, and proceeded to choke again.
Okay. Slow, shallow breaths. In through the mouth, out through the nose. Try to ignore the smell and taste of this place. And get the heck out of the water!

His mental reconditioning and self-hyping had him wading through the hip deep mire towards what he hoped was a nearby patch of dirt and not one of the many floating islands of debris and trash.

And he did mean a LOT of trash. And recyclables. Piles upon piles of black trash bags mixed with clear plastic recycling bags mixed with molded through stacks of broken down cardboard. There was also a very familiar school desk.
"Wow, was that kid was just using his quirk to get out of chores?" Midoriya thought aloud rhetorically.
Then, something moved in the piles of trash.
Midoriya caught a flash of bright red, flapping wings and took a step back thinking Tsubasa was disappeared with him and didn't like the idea of a confrontation with the much larger boy at that moment. But then he caught full side of the person and sighed in relief.

He definitely had a similar quirk to Tsubasa, what with the two large red wings, but the rest of his body was also mutated. Hoofed feet came out of digitigrade legs. Legs that, like the body they were connected to, was covered in red, matted fur. His face and arms hadn't been spared by his quirk either. Two curling horns above blazing yellow eyes above camel lips. Rather sharp claws too.

Some people really didn't get lucky with the draw when they got their quirks.

"H...Hey!" Midoriya called out to the kid, or very short adult, with a tentative wave.

Their head shot up and looked him directly in the eyes. They made a disturbing gurgling sound that started off quiet at first before getting louder and turned into a blood-curdling screech.
It charged at him. It's hesitance born of confusion at being so casually approached waned off and violence took its place.
Midoriya's mind went a mile per minute to figure out what was going on.

Man or woman with debilitating quirk mutating them into a form resembling a demon. Probably a severe social outcast as a result. Digging through trash in a mire. Yeah, mental illness to the point of being feral was something he probably should have expected.
Oh right, claws.
Forcibly shutting his brain off Deku acted. The only thing near him, and fortunately within arms reach, was the school desk that had arrived in this dump moments before he had. A weapon was a weapon after all and beggars can't be choosers.
Lifting the desk by two legs, Midoriya held it aloft like a shield and the creature bared down upon him all the same. It's sharp claws tore through the cheap plywood of his elementary school desk like copy paper. The battering of claws against his pitiful barrier soon left him backing away from the clearly unwell person boasted two metal rods with a bit of splintered plywood.

Well, when life gives you cudgels…
The creature, for this person had clearly descended into being something less than human, lunged at him again and this time Midoriya gritted his teeth and planted his feet.
With his back to the deep, rancid water he knew this was now a truly life or death situation. He would not be pushed back any further.

Side-stepping with more agility than he though himself capable of, Midoriya batted away the two clawed hands, only for the forearms of said arms to snap like twigs from the parry. The creature screamed. Midoriya screamed. They were both justifiably freaking out now.
But instead of coming to their senses and fleeing from humidor like any animal or sane human being would, thus further solidifying his belief that this person was well and truly gone from some mental illness or substance abuse, they lunged at him again!

He would later marvel at the casualness and complete lack of fanfare with which he struck the creature on the head. He bonked it. That's really the best way to describe it. He struck the deranged person on the head once and layed them out flat.
For a moment he was too afraid to do anything but hold his makeshift weapons towards the creature in case they got back up. But they didn't. They merely twitched for a moments. And then stopped moving entirely. Eyes open and lifeless.
It was dead.

"My god…" Midoriya gasped, barely above a whisper. "I just killed a man."



--------------------------------------

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.
Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room.
$25 per 500 words for Adult material or for original fiction/nonfiction, meaning anything that is not fanfiction.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 2:
A Rude Awakening

Izuku didn't know how long it took him to regain his breathing or stop the waterworks, but he was well and truly exhausted by the time he had it was getting dark and fast.
He closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath. Then another. And another. It didn't make him feel better enough to get over the dead man next to him but he had to take act all the same. He was wet, covered in filth, in a place that no person should spend the night sleeping in. He had to get a move on. But first, he needed to collect anything useful.
He put his two makeshift clubs, see also, "steel desk Legs" into his beltline and began scavenging as the little red winged man had been doing before.
Izuku did his best to avoid the stagnant pools of water and filth, but failed almost as terribly as he did trying to avoid the swarms of flies and mosquitos. This was mostly due to the solid ground not being solid at all, but instead being clumps of grass or other plant detritus forming what looked like ground. Fortunately, he never got more than wet ankles from it. He tore open trash bag after trash bag with one word on his mind.
Fire.
It was already getting chilly and with the insect swarms harassing him he wouldn't get any rest without it, and even less safety. Dry paper was easy to come by, as was an old cloth grocery back to collect and carry it all with. He even found some dryer lent and some broken chair legs, wooden ones obviously. Metal or plastic ones wouldn't do him much good. As the sun was nearly ready to set he dug through his eighth trash bag and found a miracle.
"Yes! Nail polish remover!" Izuku whooped as if a helicopter was descending to airlift him out of there.
There was barely a thimbleful of the green liquid left in the bottle, but opening and taking a quick sniff told him it would do for an accelerant. Now all he needed was a method of ignition. And wouldn't you know it? He found a broken grill lighter. He checked it and it was clearly out of butane, but that was fine. He snapped off the end like a twig and got quick access to the flint, which still produced a spark when he clicked the button.
Now to just get out of this swamp.
There were plenty of small, wooded areas around him but they were all so sparse with vegetation that they didn't look to provide much shelter. He spotted one patch of woods, maybe ten trees in total, that was absolutely covered in shrubbery a half kilometer north and knew where he'd be sleeping for the night. Hoping against hope that it wouldn't be swampy there too he began the short trek, and after a few moments he was well and truly on dry ground.
Maybe the bogs were as small and interspersed as the trees and boulders? The latter two did appear in clumps together, but he didn't encounter any more of the former on his trek to his desired shelter. He was upon the edge of the small meadow when he remembered his murder victim and blanched. He had left him there to rot in a dump. Literally. What kind of villain does that?
He was already well on his way to hyperventilating again when a simple thought came to him.
It's not like he could have carried or dragged him away anyways. He'd have to find help to retrieve his body for his family. Which he swore he would have to do.
His to do list now consisted of starting a fire, sleeping through the night, finding civilization, getting to a police station and reporting what happened, make amends with the family. Solid plan.
It was now well and truly night, so he stumbled through the brush hoping to find a clear area within the trees, and was lucky enough not only to find one, but to discover an abandoned campsite. Long burned-out logs that had been overtaken by past moisture and plant life sat at the center of the small clearing. There was even a bed of sand where somebody had dug up the earth and sifted it into a soft place to put their sleeping bag. That meant civilization couldn't be too far away, he'd have to hunt for a deer trail or proper hiking trail in the morning. For now, he needed to work on that fire.
He scrounged blindly in the dark around the bushes around him, feeling for loose twigs or branches for dryness. He lucked out yet again that evening when he found a fallen branch longer than he was. He could pretty much just make a small fire and slowly slide the branch in throughout the night, burning off the tip like a cigarette. In fact, that's exactly what he would do.
Making use of what others had already built he bunched up the loose paper and dryer lent on top of the small coals and mountain of ash. He then VERY carefully placed the dryer lent to the mouth of the bottle of nail polish removal and let as little as possible seep into the clothlike material. He wanted to save as much as he could in case he needed to start a fire again. Then, feeling the wet spot with his thumb, he put the lighter flint to it and clicked the button.
The lint caught on his first try and with but a little blowing it spread to all of the paper and soon after that the twigs as well. From there he simply put the broken chair leg he had found into it and waited for them to really start burning. When he finally had a sizable fire within the ring of rocks and ash he had enough light with which to see and scrounge further.
The point of the fire wasn't necessarily heat, although it did that too, but his main purpose for wanting it was to keep the insect away. Light and heat wouldn't do that, smoke would. So he found the wettest, greenest leaves he could find and added them to the flame. It dimmed significantly when he did so but that was alright because he didn't want it too bright. He didn't know what other kind of crazies were out here. But he got his wish, he had smoke now. A little more than he bargained for.
He coughed and sputtered and teared up for a third time that day, although by now he was too emotionally and physically exhausted to actually cry. He might have also been dehydrated, but that too would have to wait until morning.
When the smoke cleared a bit he organized his piles of paper, twigs, wet leaves and the large branch for ease of use he disrobed to let his soiled clothes dry by the fire. After that he crawled, pitifully, to the patch of sand. As he crawled into his bed of sand he felt a strange burning sensation crawling through his skin. His last thought before bed was that he would probably wake up with a bad skin reaction to the disgusting water he had waded through, but that would have to wait because he barely managed to finish that thought before sleep overtook him in this strange new place.

Izuku Midoriya woke up to a loud crack from the fire and the moving of shadows dancing in the night. A very large shadow, standing over his fire and tending to the branch.
He gasped, louder than he probably should have, and scrambled away from it... and away from his two metal clubs and only means of self defense against the full-grown adult who was now looking at him.
She stood up at her full height showing herself to be tall for a woman, but then she backed away from the fire and, in turn, him. This game him more space and clamed him down somewhat, and gave him a good look at her. And wow, did she look like a proper hero or what?! Her suit had a lime and dark green color scheme with gold trim and even golder jewelry. Jewelry he suspected were support items based on how they were composed of matching cuffs on both wrists, ankles, neck and even her waistline with a strange tri-pronged headset that wrapped around her skull. The odd thing about her outfit was the classic underboob, a design heroines hadn't been using for decades but this lady was trying to bring back like the up and coming Bubble Girl. The design of her top showed off every tones abdominal of her stomach. For some reason Midoriya always just attributed well-toned abdominals with heroes and hard work, and villainy with laziness.
He suspected her abilities were either psychic or elemental in nature, maybe both. He'd guess electricity.
"I am Isendra of the Zann Esu clan. May I rest in the warmth of your fire young one?" She asked by way of an introduction.
Izuku nodded vigorously, absolutely ecstatic at the prospect of meeting a hero he'd somehow never even heard of before.
"You smell atrocious young one, as do your clothes. I would consider them a loss." Isendra of whatever clan said as a conversation starter as she advanced on her large pack, which she had left propped on a tree.
"Oh, um, yeah. I sort of appeared in a bog filled with trash." Izuku told her.
She rummaged through her pack as he talked, pulling out a couple waterskins and a leather pouch that looked like a leather feed bag. She stopped when he finished his explanation and looked at him.
"What do you mean by appeared?" She asked before standing back up and moving over to his pitiful fire, but not before tossing him a waterskin.
"Oh, um... One of my classmates had a warp ability of some kind he was playing with on furniture and he sort of, accidentally, used it on me. Thank you." He explained the embarrassing story before picking up the waterskin.
She paused in her mission of putting cured meats and potatoes onto metal skewers to raise an eyebrow at him.
"You are a student? And one of your classmates can warp people long distances? That requires a lot of power and skill. What school is this?" She demanded.
"Aldera junior high." Izuku said. "And skill not so much, we are all way too young to have any control of our quirks. We aren't allowed to go to hero academies until we're eighteen."
She stared at him some more.
"I have never heard of this school, and many of the words you use are bizarre to me." Isendra admitted before sitting down cross-legged and giving him her full attention. "Tell me about your nation, these quirks you mentioned and these schools and academies."
She was looking so attentively at him, like a student before a teacher, that his usual nervous tendencies returned with a vengeance. Let the muttering commence.
"Oh, well, I don't know what you call them here but quirks are supernatural abilities people are born with. Some people have emitter types, mutant types, transformation types, strength types and in my classmates case warp type. Hero academies are for training people with powerful quirks to use them for societies benefit against criminals, I'm sure you have those here too..."
She watched him attentively, stone-faced, as he explained all of this.
"And these quirks, how many do people have?" She asked.
"Oh, everybody just gets the one." He said. "Do people have multiple ones here?"
"No young one. We do not have these quirks at all." She said. "I find the concept very interesting. What is yours?"
He turtled up and tried to make himself as small as possible at that question.
"I don't have one." He said, honestly.
Then he registered her words. Were there still any countries that didn't have quirks appearing? Last he heard even isolated tribes like the Sentinelese have been developing quirks, and somehow this turned out to be the catalyst for them making contact with Indian society and becoming civilized. So where in the world was he.
"So, not everybody in your country has these quirks?" She summarized. "And they grant people a single ability, but a potent form of that ability."
"Not always. Izuku told her. Some peoples are weak. My mother can only move small things with her telekinesis." Izuku said.
"So, your mother has one of these? What of your father?" Isendra asked
"He can breath fire." Izuku said.
Isendra hummed as the smell of the now cooked food filled their meadow.
"So having parents with these abilities does not guarantee you will have one? Are you quite certain you don't?" She asked.
"Positive." Izuku said confidently. "Everyone has their quirks express themselves in childhood, by the age of five. Nobody has been such a late bloomer as to reveal it after ten."
"You seem rather dejected by this loss." She said.
"Well of course!" He said in frustration. "Who doesn't want the ability to move things with their mind or decimate evildoers with flames of their mouth? I had so wish to have one of my parents abilities, or an odd fusion of them like most people do."
She shook her head pitifully.
"No. There is more than that. Tell me." She insisted.
He made himself small again but muttered his answer obediently.
"I want to be a hero. Like all might I want people to fear the evil and hurt no more when I am there." He said. "But I don't know how I can become that without a quirk."
Isendra removed the skewers of meat and potatoes from the fire and handed him one. Izuku hesitated, confused as to when she had gotten so close as to be able to hand him anything, but he took it all the same. Remembering the waterskin in his other hand he took a gulp and dug into the food.
"You tell an interesting story. One most people would not believe and one I advise against sharing ever again." Isendra said. "I only believe you because you are such a painfully honest and sweet child and are clearly not insane. And your being out here is explained by your tale."
Izuku stopped chewing on the tough meat and blinked dumbly at the woman. He decided to keep his manners and finish chewing and swallowing before responding.
"What's so interesting or hard to believe about it?" He asked. "Similar warp accidents happen all the time. When I get to a police station I can call home and the school and confirm it if you want."
"I do not know what a police station is or what you mean by calling, which are yet more pieces of evidence that you are telling the truth." She explained. "Plus, I saw this garbage patch you mentioned. I have seen the objects from your homeland, objects unlike any from any land I know of, and I know of them all. I also have confirmed, multiple times, that they had been warped through the gap between worlds. You are not on the planet you know anymore young one. And pray nobody beyond me learns of this."
Izuku stared at her.
She stared back.
"I don't believe you." Izuku said simply before taking another bite of the meal she had provided him.
She laughed, a genuine mirthful laugh.
"And what reasons do you have to doubt me?" She asked.
"Well, besides the strange way you talk, I was already attacked by gibbering lunatic who clearly had a quirk. So far you're the second person I've met and I'm working from the assumption that you yourself may be insane." Izuku told her a bit bluntly. "Even after you said you're sure I'm not. Plus multiple worlds theory is barely even a hypothesis. The realm of fantasy."
She didn't get angry at his matter-of-factness or rudeness, merely smiled more deeply. It had reached her eyes now.
"Well, young one. You will find that your manner of speech is the strange one here. And in time you will come to accept what I said. Or maybe you won't. That is up to you.," Isendra said. "Having found you out here I feel a responsibility to escort you back to the encampment. There you can get new clothes and food. Especially with this."
She picked up one of the table legs and held it up to the light in admiration.
The only reason Izuku didn't panic at the sight of his "weapon" in her hands was because he was all but certain that even with both of them he had no chance of surviving if she decided to get violent. So he was working under the acceptance that his life was in this crazy ladies hands.
"This is quite possibly the highest quality steel I have ever seen in my life." Isendra told him. "I think Charsi may pay a high price for it, and then you can afford clean clothes, basic camping and survival gear and meals for some time. From there, your fate will be yours to decide with or without me."
Izuku nodded with every crazy word she said. He could safely ignore the woman's claims that the cheap steel legs from the desk were at all valuable and the existence of this Charsi person. No point in asking about these delusions. But something she said did warrant curiosity.
"And why do you feel responsible for helping me?" He asked.
She looked at him and gave him a much warmer and kinder smile that the amused one before.
"Because, young one. I want to be a great hero too."

Izuku didn't know when or how, but he'd managed to fall back asleep after his conversation with the crazy - but nide, he mentally added - lady. Somehow despite doubting her sanity he felt supremely safe with her watching over him. Did that make him crazy too? He would be justified in thinking the entire evening and night were a fever dream, but he woke up in that meadow all the same and Isendra was still there watching over him.
He also still stank and was covered in bug bites despite both of their efforts to keep the meadow smoky. Of course, most of the itching, red marks could have come from the swarm of insects he'd waded through the day before.
"Your trousers, boots and socks are all ruined." She told him. "But you cannot be walking around the Blood Moors in your undergarments and bare feet, so you will have to suffer wearing them today and get new clothes this evening. Followed by a bath... in liquor and tomatoes juice. If we can find any."
He couldn't disagree with either of her suggestions, aside from the unpleasant day of walking ahead of him.
"I think I can loan you socks at least." Isendra said. "Hopefully that will assuage some of your discomfort. Breakfast is bread. Get dressed and get ready to go."
She left the clearing to give him some privacy, already laden with her pack. He found that she had folded his pants on top of his shoes and even laid out her own clean socks on top for him. He sniffed his shoed and gagged. Yeah, that was gross. As were the bottom halves of his jeans. He noticed that above the knee heigh of the jeans he hadn't really ruined the jeans and he could get away with turning them into knee-length shorts.
He picked up one of the knife she had seemingly forgotten next to where she had used it to cut the meat for the skewers last night, and used it to slice off the offending cloth. With that done he donned his new pair of shorts and socks. Then came the repulsive part. The shoes. He closed his eyes and held his breath as he put each one on. They were thankfully dry but he still shuddered at wearing the things he had just smelled.
With those tied he put on his belt, fastened his makeshift clubs into it, sheathed the knife and walked out of the meadow towards whatever craziness the day may hold.

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.
Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room.
$25 per 500 words for smut/fetish material or for original fiction/nonfiction, meaning anything that is not fanfiction.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.​

 

[NonsensicalRants]

Bit of advice, when I upload to questionable questing I manually add space between paragraphs with the enter/return key. Also you're missing some line breaks. And you should orient story paragraphs to the left. I use the center for titles, notes and written documents like when a character is reading a news article.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 3:
A Wild World​

---

Izuku Midoriya exited the small patch of woods carrying the sheathed knife in front of him like a business card. seeing Isendra keeping watch over the horizon he approached her and offered it back to her, catching her attention with the motion.
"Oh no, you can keep it. You will need a means to defend yourself beyond a steel rod." She told him. "And a knife has many uses besides, all of which you shall learn in time."
He shrugged at her increasingly strange statements and pocketed the knife before standing up straight and looking at her expectantly. He was ready for the day of waking ahead of him. But instead of walking away from him and motioning for him to follow she stared at him confusedly.
"I did not see it in the dark last night nor in the shaded woods earlier, but there is a highly skilled painting of a man on your shirt." She stated.
Izuku looked down at himself and saw she was right, but was made confused by her being confused by it.
"Yeah?" He said slowly. "Its a photo print of All Might."
She hummed thoughtfully.
"And is it common where you're from to have photo prints of All Might on your fronts?" She asked.
"Oh yeah! He's the best!" Izuku gushed. "The number one hero! I want to be just like him, putting victims of villains and natural disasters at ease with a smile and a laugh and!"
She recoiled at his sudden enthusiasm but didn't seem displeased by it.
"I see. A hero? He certainly looks the part; He is quite handsome. I especially like the look of intensity around his eys." Isendra said. "Does he have one of those quirks you mentioned? Is that what it does? Put people at ease?"
Izuku shook his head vigorously.
"Nobody knows what his quirk is. But he's super strong, super fast and super tough. He can leap across entire cities in a split second and punch holes through mountains. He's never once lost a fight!" Izuku went on.
As he did so her mood seemed to brighten considerably, as did her good humor. Of course she liked all might too, just from hearing about him. Who couldn't?
"Our world could use a hero like that, would it be too much to ask for him to suffer the journey to our world too?" Isendra asked. "Or would the fates think it too kind to us to hand over a hero capable of solving all of our woes in a day?"
Izuku didn't have any idea how to answer that. Between still not believing her theory of him being a trans dimensional traveler to not knowing how bad wherever he was might be, he couldn't really comment on it all. But everybody deserved a hero like All Might.
"I'm just some kid who went missing due to a warp ability. I'm sure somebody will investigate my disappearance, but if they do and send somebody to this same spot I doubt it'll be all might. He tends to have more important things to be on about."
Isendra nodded in understanding and looked back to where the trash patch in thought.
She then put on her biggest smile and put her fists on either hip in an amateurish attempt at All Might imitation. It honestly wasn't bad, but she didn't have the face to pull off a smile that wide. Izuku, naturally, broke down in laughter at her attempt.
"Shouldn't we be going?" Izuku asked between snorts and giggles.
"Yes. We should. But first, you should turn your shirt inside out. People here are not accustomed to seeing photo prints." She instructed.
She spared him any more silliness and turned away from him. Together they began their walk to whatever place he would temporarily call home. but weirdly she took him back to the bog where all the trash sat in stagnant pools.
"We should look for anymore steel like the rods you are carrying. I was not joking when I said they would fetch a high price." Isendra instructed. "But first, where is this crazed man you said you killed?"
Izuku had completely forgotten about that until she reminded him. His mind must have been trying to forget as a coping mechanism. He hung his head low and guided Isendra to the spot where he had left the corpse and there it still lay, already decomposing in the hot, humid air.
For what must have been the eighth time in the same number of hours since they'd met, Izuku had confused Isendra. She glanced between the dead, red man and back at him several times. Lost for words.
"Child, this is a fallen. They come from the burning hells. They are not people and you are not a murderer." She said flatly.
Izuku stared at her. She stared back, still with the flat expression.
Not people? How could she even say that?! Those who can justify murder with a belief that their victims aren't even human are dangerous indeed, and in the early days of quirks there were many quirkless who did exactly that. Serial killers that targeted those with quirks for being mutants, or demons or just plain dangerous. They were obviously correct on two accounts there.
Could this kind, considerate and good-humored woman be a villain? She seemed to catch onto his distress and sitrust and distracted his mind with a question.
"Are there people where you're from who look like this?" She asked, indicating the corpse.
"Well, not exactly like this. But one of my classmates had wings just like his, and people have quirks that make them look like all manner of beasts." Izuku explained. "It's not beyond the realm of possibility for a quirk to make somebody look exactly like this man."
She nodded with another hum.
"I see you cannot get the idea out of your mind that he is a person, very well. I shall give him a funeral pyre as you scavenge. But know that in time you will come to see the new reality you are in, I hope you are able to accept it before it becomes too much to bear." Isendra said before turning to the corpse.
She then held her hands out at about a foot widths apart and hurled a great ball of fire at the dead man, incinerating it to ash in a matter of moments.
"You have a quirk?!" He demanded at the sight. "Why were you pretending not to understand all this time?"
"We really need to work on your manners." Isendra said sternly. "And on your ability to keep a respectful tone to your elders. No, I do not have a quirk. I am a sorceress. That was magic, not whatever abilities you have come to know. It is gained through studious practice and training, not accident of birth."
She then held her hand out in similar manner to before and flash froze the now charred skeleton and half the bog beyond into solid ice.
Izuku was silent after that. He had seen people capable of doing either of the things she just did, and honestly putting the feats to shame, but both at once? He could scarcely imagine somebody with a quirk capable of commanding both fire AND ice. Such a person would be ridiculously powerful even at a young age. This woman was powerful. Very powerful. And he doubted that was the most she could do with either fire or ice.
"You told me quirks are specialized, that they can only do one thing, yes?" Isendra clarified, clearly on a similar train of thought.
"Well, some can seem to do more than one thing if the thing it does can be adapted to multiple purposes." Izuku said honestly. "But you have made your point. I need to think."
"Think as you collect anything valuable. You will need to support yourself soon. And we really must be going." Isendra ordered.
Izuku did as ordered and poured out all of the trash from the already torn open bags. He lucked out with an old kitchen knife set and naturally grabbed the other two desk legs. Isendra had said how much the steel could be worth, after all. Aside from that there wasn't much in the trash. A few broken electronics ,but those were worthless everywhere.
When he returned to her she put his finds in her bag and together they began their walk away from the trash bog, hopefully for good.
And what a long walk it turned out to be. The Blood Moors were immense, and barely changing. Rock formations, bogs and small wooded areas were all that broke the monotony of the landscape. Although, occasionally they would pass a burnt down shack or cabin, but after Izuku spotted the scorched remains of human skeletons in one he stopped rubber necking at them.
Isendra hadn't been kidding when she said this country needed a hero like all might. Those people certainly had.
The only other thing interesting during the first half of their journey was what looked like a human with a porcupine and reptilian quirk. It had screeched and charged at them, claws bared.
Isendra erased it from existence with a bolt of lightning from between her hands. It had been so fast and loud that all Izuku could register was his need to hit the dirt, which he did. This seemed to impress Isendra.
"Good instincts. You may survive yet." She had told him.
Fire, ice AND lightning? He was starting to believe her claims. Not just that these creatures weren't actually people, but that she was a full-blown sorceress. It took a great deal of self control not to start asking her all manner of questions on what many other spells she could do. It seemed impertinent.
Not long after that they came across another ruined shack, this one thankfully not broken down. There, they had a small lunch of cured meats and stale bread before resting in comfortable silence. Izuku took this time to stretch, earning some odd glances from Isendra as he tried to contort his body in the ways he was taught.
They were back to their hike shortly and didn't speak for the remainder of the day.
That was, until they saw two giant gorilla's duking it out next to a wooded area in their path. Gorilla was the closest term he could use to describe them, but they looked more like the American superhero Bogfoot-Woman... if she'd made a children with a silverback gorilla.
Much like the porcupine-lizard-man from before they could be explained as being people with quirks, but the bestial roars, grunts and moans as they pummeled each-other into pulps dissuaded him of that notion. It was a short time before one actually killed the other, outright ripping its arm off from the socket. If that hadn't killed the other one it certainly put it into shock.
The victor didn't wait to check, already eating the stolen limp from where the flesh was torn.
"Are there people who look like that where you're from?" She asked pointedly.
"Well yeah." Izuku said, a little freaked out by the bestial noises. "But those aren't people."
She nodded.
"No. They are not." She confirmed.
The crowning moment of Izuku's disillusion with the idea that was still somehow on planet earth came near evening when the spotted an entire group of the red skinned people fighting one of those gargantuan beasts. Each as inhuman as the beast itself, though one carried a staff and was hurling balls of fire similar to what Isendra had earlier that day. They took a more circuitous route around some large rocky outcroppings to avoid the violence, and once they were clear Isendra continued her assault on his ideals.
"Are there entire platoons of people with the exact same quirk where you're from?" She asked.
"Well, some families do that." He said. "People with very similar quirks, like say both having the same animal quirk, will get married and start families. But that's not what those are."
Even he heard the doubt in his own voice. After those two beasts it now seemed completely plausible for those people to be wild beasts too.
He looked her dead in the eye before asking his next question.
"Actual demons from hell?" He asked.
"Actual demons from hell." She nodded.
Demons still seemed like a bit of a stretch for him to believe, but he was now at least open to the idea.
It was nearly sundown when they reached what Izuku hoped was their destination. A wide river with a stone bridge stretching across it, leading to a wooden fort of sorts. Its entire outer wall was nothing but spiked, wooden palisades. Women with bows stood guard at the entrance and every corner of the complex. Scratch that, beautiful and shockingly in-shape women stood guard at the entrance and every corner.
The bows were certainly strange, and he was now wondering what technological level the people of this world - assuming he believed that yet - were capable of. Were they Medeival?
Isendra stopped him and took her pack off. She dug inside it for a few moments and promptly retrieved a bar of soap. She haded it to him and he accepted it gratefully, as if being gifted the elixir of life by the gods themselves.
"Go. Wash yourself in the river. I will return shortly with clothes and new shoes for you, along with a hot meal. I will be taking your old shoes with me." She instructed.
Izuku gladly took the bar of soap and did away with his shoes. Even though he thought it was weird to be bathing in a river, he assumed she was going to go explain things to whoever was in charge of this fort. Hopefully they had actual bathtubs and running water, but he was starting to suspect he really wasn't in Kanses anymore and a hot shower was out of the question.
Fortunately, with it being such a warm day, he suspected the cold water wouldn't be too bad.
She took his shoes with a notable look of disgust as he disrobed into his boxers and approached the river.
"And again, I cannot stress enough." Isendra stopped him before he took the plunge, catching his full attention. "You must NOT tell anybody of your origins. If anybody asks, your caravan was eradicated but fallen and you managed to kill one as you got away. That I found you last night and brought you here. Do you understand?"
Izuku nodded hesitantly. If this was her camp then it was likely that everyone else was as crazed as her, even now he couldn't completely believe her story himself.
The cold water was a shock to his system, but he was more than willing to suffer it after the day of hiking while sweating trash water. He dunked himself into the water completely and repeatedly, then came the soap. He must have lathered and rinsed four whole times before he was done, not getting out of the water until he was well and truly shivering. Even then, he wasn't finished.
Sitting on the bed of the river he lathered, scrubbed and rinsed his feet and calves more times than he had the rest of his body. His toes were numb by the time he was satisfied and laying on the grass for the last of the sunlight to dry him off and warm him up.
He was almost dozing off by the time the sun was over the horizon and lighting the sky those pretty reds and oranges when Isendra returned. She actually startled him by dropping a pair of red boots and a bag just like hers beside his head.
"They are not much, and certainly are not armor. But they are yours." She told him as she sat on the railing of the stone bridge. "Kashya has also agreed to let you stay with them and will put you to work tomorrow. You are to sleep in the stables for tonight and tomorrow you will be interrogated given a tent. I told them your story, the one I made up. Stick to it."
Izuku nodded as he rifled through his bag full of clean clothes. He wasted no time in donning one of the four pairs of pants and a matching shirt. The wool socks felt like heaven over his numb toes, and the red boots fit snugly.
"Wait, you mean those stables?" Izuku asked, pointing to the thatched roof building that stood outside of the encampment.
"Indeed." Isendra said.
"Is that safe?" He asked.
"So long as we rotate and keep watch, yes." Isendra told him. "And seeing as I kept watch over you all last night, I think you should take first watch. Wake me if anything dangerous comes to harass us. Or at midnight, whichever comes first."

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron or FF profile. UserID: 10036896
Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room.
$25 per 500 words for smut/fetish material or
$25 per page(250-300 words) for original fiction/nonfiction or anything that is not fanfiction.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check his profile.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 4:
The First of Many Terrors
​

---

Izuku's first two months in Sanctuary went by faster than any previous two in his life. This was mostly because he barely had even a single moment of downtime during it all outside of sleeping, bathing and meals.
His first week was spent under the specific tutelage of Captain Kashya, an intense red-haired woman. She insisted that any child who passes through the sisterhood's care must know how to use a knife and a bow. Izuku's insistence that he was, in fact, not a girl did nothing to deter her. And so she drilled him on basic archery. From dawn till dusk if he wasn't practicing his aim on straw targets he was cleaning and repairing the bows of every rogue in the encampment or drilling strikes with the knife Isendra had gifted him.
"You will make yourself useful or you shall not eat." She had said sternly and repeatedly. "I don't expect you to be physically capable of defending yourself anytime soon, but by Philios you will be mentally able to do so. Until then you will find uses for yourself outside of combat."
Izuku both wanted to make himself useful and wanted to eat, so he was rather pleased with this turn of events. But he got the distinct impression that Kashya was deeply depressed and anxious. Life in the encampment wasn't keeping her as busy as her usual duties would. The boredom and anticipation of being cooped up in the Rogue Encampment instead of their recently invaded Keep must have been killing her, why else would she both train a boy like him in basic archery and knife fighting?
When somebody finally told him the story of how the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye lost their home he realized depressed and anxious were not sufficient words to describe how she must be feeling and warmed up even more to her strict and arguably harsh treatment of him. He realized she was trying to do to herself what they all were successfully doing to him, keeping too busy to think or feel. And boy did they keep him busy.
Kashya had pawned him off onto the Caravan leader, Warriv, who tried to teach him the subtle art of wagon repair and wheel making. After his twenty fifth catastrophic, and possibly expensive, failure in that he pawned Izuku off onto the blacksmith Charsi.
She was one muscular but had an absolutely adorable voice that juxtaposed her scarred and soot-covered appearance at all. She worked him hard, at his insistence, but was sweet about it. And from that day on every bone in his body hurt from the labor, which made him happy.
From then on, splitting wood for arrows and cutting feathers for fletching made up most of his mornings, while making charcoal in a closed burner and cleaning out the forge and smithing equipment made up his evenings.
The weirdest part of living in the rogue encampment was the communal baths in the river. Everyone bathed every day on a cycle. Night watch folk bathed in the mornings while everyone else kept guard, day workers bathed in the evening while the night watch guarded them. Nobody seemed nonplussed by this and not even the normally lecherous, or at least perverted-humour blessed, Gheed acted inappropriately during said baths. Possibly because the water was so cold, possibly because they were all kept so exhausted from their long days of work, or possibly because washing time was considered sacred even to him.
Izuku earned a reputation as an unusually shy boy due to his tendency to bathe a bit further down the river from anybody else while avoiding the conversation and neither wanting to be looked at nor wanting to see the many nude women around him. For some reason they thought he was odd for this and after a while the priestess Akara invited him into her tent.
"Was anything done to you prior to you arriving at this caravan I should know about?" Akara asked him pointedly.
"Um... What?" Izuku asked, not understanding her meaning.
She stared at him in consideration, before taking a deep breath to speak again.
"The sisterhood targets a certain type of young woman for recruiting. Those whom, as girls as young as you or younger, were forced into doing things that only grown women should do and in a loving marriage. Worse are those who were harmed by other women, whose twistedness is far worse than the men who prey upon young girls and make use of sharp implements or worse to harm children." Akara explained. "Has anything like that happened to you?"
Izuku stared at her with the blankest expression he could manage.
"Ma'am, if you're asking me if I was ever sold into prostitution or raped, the answer is no." He told her flatly. "Nor have I ever been sodomized with a knife."
The shock on her face from an eleven-year-old even knowing several of those words, let alone using them, would have been hilarious if the situation wasn't so serious.
"And I'm confused as to why you might think I had been?" Izuku prompted.
Akara shook herself calm before answering.
"Your behavior while bathing inspired many of the inhabitants of the camp to come to me with this concern. They recognized your distaste for the nakedness of others and uncomfortableness with your own body as behavior they themselves showed for a long time. One of my duties as a spiritual leader is to talk members of our order through these traumas and heal from them. As such, I am the one such concerns are always brought to." Akara explained.
"Oh. Well, everyone where I come from is cagey about nudity. The only people who should see you like that are your spouse and maybe children or siblings, but only while they're very young." Izuku explained. "Communal bathing hasn't been acceptable in a long while. At least not with both sexes."
Akara had accepted this and dismissed him, letting him go with a polite request not to share any of his revelations about the Sisterhood and its' members with anybody else, which was a promise Izuku was more than willing to make.
About a month into his stay there his body had adapted to the work and he no longer went to sleep nor woke up aching. This turned out to be a disaster for him, as it meant his mind was now allowed to wander and he once against started feeling that burning sensation he had on that first night in the meadow. He hadn't felt it the following night when he had walked an entire day through the Blood Moors with Akara, his feet, legs and back were all too sore. But now that he wasn't distracted from it by the aches and pains of labor? It was back with a vengeance.
From that day forward he pleaded almost weekly for additional tasks to do around camp. He went from splitting wood for arrow shafts to chopping wood with an ax. The soreness to new muscle groups from doing that kept his mind off of the burning under his skin and thoughts of home. Carrying larger and larger loads across camp helped when that stopped.
All the while during his stay he kept up with a morning routine of archery and knife drills, which earned him a few appreciative nods or looks from the rogues, including from captain Kashya. He didn't know why; it was just another chore like any other. It was honestly one of the easiest and most automatic of them, aside from bathing and eating.
It was near the end of his second month there that his peaceful life came to an end.
Izuku had been eating lunch at the time. It was some kind of mystery meat that he suspected belonged to one of the felled guerrilla creatures as it didn't taste like what he expected lizard-porcupine meat to taste like. Whatever it was, it was tough and gamey, but good.
"Let them in! Quickly!" He heard Kashya yell to the guards at the gate, who quickly opened it.
Everyone around him stopped what they were doing and moved towards the noise to see what was happening. Izuku finished off the last of his lunch before doing the same. He knew this could either be something great, like a good catch from the last hunt, or something really bad. It turned out to be something really bad.
A quartet of scouts, bloodied and bruised with three dead being dragged behind them, were rushed to Akara's outdoor facilities for treatment. They talked the whole while.
"What happened?" Kashya demanded as she tried to bat away the small crowd forming around the injured.
"A cave." The head scout of her group said. "Filled with undead abominations and fallen, more than I've ever seen since the Keep fell. Worst of all, its only a few kilometers to the east, barely beyond the line of sight from atop the gate. I don't know how we missed it before!"
And so began the chatter.
"Is that where all the zombies and fallen are coming from?" Said one person.
"That or they may be amazing there for an attack on our encampment." Said another.
But Izuku paid no mind to the rank speculation. His focus was on Isendra, who was standing off just outside of the small crowd deep in thought, with an expression he recognized. An expression he had seen on heroes faces before jumping into action. The face of a hero planning their course of action. And now he was sure he had the same look on his face.

---

Izuku snuck out of the Rogue encampment through a gap in the fencing barely big enough for him just after dark that night. He hid beside a tree just to the east and waited. He didn't have to wait long, as the moon was barely risen when he heard the familiar footsteps go past him.
"Take me with you." Izuku demanded as soon as she walked past.
Her startled scream of shock and following tumble to the ground almost made him burst out in laughter himself. He hoped they were far enough away from the encampment not to make every nightwatchwoman knock an arrow and turn their bows in their direction.
"If I could cast magic as quickly as the sisters can fire an arrow you would be dead, young Midoriya." Isendra said as she picked herself up with a hand on her chest.
Slower to cast than it is to shoot an arrow. File that away for later.
"Now, why do you wish to go to the Den of Evil with me?" Isendra asked.
Den of Evil? Kind of a tacky name, but if that's what the encampment had decided on then so be it.
"Every hero needs a sidekick, and if I am to be a hero someday I need to follow in the footsteps of another. You're the one I got." Izuku explained. "And I owe you all the help I can give, after all you've done for me. Ditto for the encampment."
"And how do you suppose you will be able to help me in a cave full of demons and undead?" Isendra asked.
"Pack mule." Izuku said simply.
"Pack mule?" Isendra asked.
"Pack mule." Izuku confirmed. "Give me your pack, you focus on fighting without being weighed down by the bulky thing. Let me worry about collecting any treasures we find as I watch your back."
Isendra removed her large pack and handed it to him, surprising Izuku with how light and nearly empty it was.
"Very well. Hurry along, I wish to be done by morning." Isendra told him.
"Really, that's it?" Izuku asked, suspicious.
"You will need to become strong and hardened, and you will need to do so quickly. Your months working for the encampment and blacksmith in particular has already given you most of the physical benefits they ever will, or at least until you begin growing into manhood, and now you must at least witness battle." Isendra said. "But I have conditions.
"Name them!" Izuku said excitedly, unable to stop his giddy shaking and All-Mightish grin.
She listed off her demands one by one, raising a finger with each.
"One: You stay behind me, fist clenching my belt. Checking corners and warning me of oncoming danger from my back." She instructed.
Izuku nodded.
"Two: You do what I say, when I say, no matter how terrible the order. If I instruct you to leave me behind and flee the cave, you do so. If I tell you to kill me and then yourself, you do so. You do not question me. You do not disobey. Are we clear?" she asked.
That one was tougher for him. A couple months ago he could scarcely imagine such scenarios, but now he could and he didn't like it, but he nodded all the same.
"Third: You collect anything useful you see. Scavenge the dead as I slay them. Weapons, armor, jewelry, everything. Can you do that? Or do your sensibilities still prevent you." She asked.
Izuku shrugged. Again, looting the corpses of the killed would have given him pause, but these really weren't people. Whatever they would find there needed to be killed, and the people in the encampment needed supplies. Izuku and Isendra needed supplies too.
"I accept your terms and conditions." Izuku told her cheekily, knowing she wouldn't understand the reference.
She nodded at him once and turned to continue her trek east. Izuku followed her.
"By the way, how did you sneak out?" Izuku asked.
"I didn't. I walked out through the front gate. That was always allowed."

---

The moon was high in the sky by the time they reached the cave entrance. Izuku could see how the scouts managed to miss it. It was a tiny rock outcropping huddled in a large expanse of white boulders and felled trees. If he hadn't been looking for it, he might have missed it himself.
Painted with crude depictions of a demon skull and a green, horned beasts spitting a great ball of lightning at would-be heroes.
He spotted a corpse just outside of the cave, near the mouth, as if of a man killed as he tried to flee from the horrors within. Izuku looked up at Isendra questioningly. She nodded at the skeletal remains and Izuku bore down on it with thieving hands. He found not so much as a crumb among the tattered clothes and rusted through chain mail. All he'd achieved in the exercise was proving to Isendra that he was capable and willing to pat down the dead for belongings.
"Come, quietly. Remember my terms." Isendra whispered as she creeped past him into the cave.
Izuku reached out to grasp her by the belt as she had instructed earlier and together, they entered the hole in the earth.
The cave was all teeth. Stalactites and stalagmites as far as the eye could see, which wasn't far in this darkness, even with the glow of Isendra's staff and the magic gems in the jewelry she wore. Isendra walked tentatively forward, hunched over in respect to the low ceiling. They didn't have to get far before encountering the first of many creatures calling the cave home, and if Izuku had thought the fallen capable of higher thought he would have deemed it intelligent to plant to of the gargantuan beasts to guard the entrance.
As he had seen her do months before, she clapped her hands together and sprayed the two gorilla-creatures with a whirlwind of ice, coating them in a thick layer of mist. They struggled against their new, cold armor and tried their hardest to advance towards Izuku and Isendra, but the latter kept her hands near each other the whole time and followed up her icy gale with two bolts of blame that shattered the two beasts like fine glass.
It was as the last of their frozen solid pieces fell to the stone floor he heard it. The cave came alive with the sound of scurrying feet and claws on stone, from every direction their panicked and enraged sounds echoed.
"We must move more quickly now." Isendra told him.
She advanced further without waiting for a reply and he followed closely. They ducked beneath a layer of low hanging stalactites and the cave opened into a massive chamber filled with fallen. At least several dozen of the red imps welcomed their arrival with snarls and gnashing of teeth. These ones were armed with clubs, short swords and bucklers.
His ranking of their intelligence just increased from monkey to neanderthal.
"Grasp me by the waist, make certain to make as much skin on skin contact with me as you can." Isendra instructed.
Izuku blushed at the phrasing but did as he was told. Wrapping both arms around her midriff and pressing his cheek against her bare back. He felt every hair on his body stand on end as a tingling sensation filled the air, and the room was filled with lightning. Small arcs washed over him harmlessly and onto the ground where they grew into wide rings nearly as large as he was. They passed along the ground and bared down on the fallen far less harmlessly than they had him.
He both heard and smelled them being fried alive like raw meat in the microwave. Both the popping sounds of the liquids in their body, and their screams. Neither disturbed him all that much. They didn't suffer long, sadly, and fell to the ground dead in a parade of thumps.
Izuku let go of the woman as soon as he felt it was safe to do so, uncomfortable with such intimate contact.
Before he could even survey the scene around them properly he saw a deep red light envelop one of the dead bodies only for it to rise again. Right, they had mentioned undead things here hadn't they?
"Shaman!" Isendra called out.
She ran forward looking for whatever this shaman was and Izuku ran after her. When they both spotted it Izuku found the name shaman very appropriate. It was another fallen with a Wooden staff decorated with bones. It certainly looked like a shaman to him. And apparently Izuku looked like a more important target than Isendra to it as it threw a fireball of its own at him.
"Get down!" Isendra commanded and Izuku obeyed.
He dived out of the way, keeping enough situational awareness to keep his eyes on Isendra and the shaman. She amazed him with her prowess yet again when she reached out, with her bare hand, and caught the firebolt. It exploded in her hand and consumed her entire arm just past her elbow. He could see the flesh beneath vaporizing from the heat leaving a black husk where her arm and hand had been before and cried out in empathetic pain.
She somehow ignored this pain entirely and returned fire, literally, with another firebolt of her own that did to the shaman what the shaman had done to her arm. She repeated this action with the recently resurrected but now slower and dumber, fallen and felt himself breath a sigh of relief when the battle ended.
Izuku stared at her in mounting horror as she took deep, calming breaths against the pain she must have been in.
"Open my pack, and pass me a red vial from the side pocket on your left." She ordered, eyes closed in concentration.
Izuku scrambled to fulfill her order, taking the pack off and rummaging through the two large side cavities of it. The first one he opened held blue vials, so those couldn't be it. Thankfully the process of elimination left him with one cavity to search and inside of there he found what he was looking for. He removed the cork and handed it to the woman.
"Thank you young one. Now, go pick the bodies clean." She instructed before pouring the red liquid on her ruined arm and hand.
She then drank the remaining contents of the bottle, and its magic was plain for him to see. He saw the muscles, tendons and fat of her ruined limb rehydrate and return to the natural red and white it was supposed to. Skin knitted itself over the new flesh soon after that but it was a slow process.
"Young Midoriya?" Isendra prompted. "I believe I gave you an order?"
With that, she brought him back to reality and reminded him of his duties. He got to work.

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.
Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room.
$25 per 500 words for smut/fetish material or for original fiction/nonfiction, meaning anything that is not fanfiction.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[Blasterbot]

Minor quibble: Japan does have communal bathing and I am pretty sure they had that in the anime on the training trip.

Other than that great story so far.

 

[NonsensicalRants]

Minor quibble: Japan does have communal bathing and I am pretty sure they had that in the anime on the training trip.

Other than that great story so far.

Click to shrink...

Communal Co-ed bathing was the issue.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 5:
Corpsefire
​

---

​

Izuku stopped staring long enough to wade through the electrocuted bodies and sift through the belongings of the dead.

Most of the swords and shields were word out by rust and general lack of care. The same was true of the leather armor they were, not that he particularly wanted to wear the clothes of these sulfuric-smelling creatures. He did find one such fallen with a complete set of leather clothes a few sizes too large for him who seemed to have actually taken pride in his things. It still smelled like rotten eggs, but the leather cap, gloves and shirt were remarkably well maintained. That or they were only recently pillaged from the Fallen's victims.

Noting the milder odor of rotten eggs coming from them, Izuku assumed the latter.

Aside from that all Izuku found amongst the dead that was of value came from their coin purses.

"Why do they carry money?" He asked as he pilfered through the gold coins.
"Greed and the love of precious metals and gems is a sin, and they love all sins. They need not eat to survive or fornicate to reproduce, yet they devour and rape all the same. Such is that nature of demons." Isendra had told him.

Izuku, despite his experience in regretting such statements from the woman, doubted that explanation. Maybe it was merely his sensibilities preventing him from truly regarding these beings as gibbering beasts, but the love of money seemed to indicate at least some form of sentience, as if the use of weapons alone didn't do that. More that merely being a bird-like obsession with all things shiny or expression of abstract evil in their being, were they capable of bartering and trading, at least with one another? If he could find some kind of ring of invisibility - preferably sans the ancient dark lord soul and volcano - he would love nothing more than to sneak into a fallen hideout like this and watch their behavior like a zoologist watching apes.

"Let us continue on our way. And be more cautious." Isendra commanded.

Izuku hurried to stuff all of his finds into the large sack and rushed back to her side.

He returned to his position of holding her by her belt as they continued deeper into the cave. The rest of their adventure was not worthy of the word. Isendra seemingly waved the little red demons out of existence one by one with those majestic fireballs of hers, only switching to ice when another gargantuan beast reared its ugly head or the wide area lightning spell when they entered a room with just a few too many of the bastards. It almost seemed like a regular nine to five for her, almost boring. Routine and tedium.

The first time they came across an honest to god zombie stalking towards them Izuku nearly panicked, even forgetting to keep hold of Isendra's belt and temporarily falling behind her as she advanced on it in return. It too was obliterated into pieces by a firebolt, and she seemed to be oblivious to his disappearance from her senses until he caught back up. When he did she turned to stare at him questioningly, but he merely shook his head and motioned towards a steep step they had walked over just a moment before.

His insinuated excuse that he had merely tripped satisfied her and they continued on their way. He didn't bother trying to search that first zombie for anything of value, her obliterating it made such a search rather pointless.

Nothing else in the cave gave her any difficulty whatsoever, and Izuku knew then that her taking him along was charity and that his service as a pack mule was barely even a time saver for her.

Strangely enough, the shambling zombies had better cared-for equipment than the fallen. This was mostly because their short swords and daggers were still strapped to their beltline and unmolested. They clearly lacked what little sentience the fallen had that was required to wield a weapon. Even when they were obliterated by a firebolt their weapons and coin purses were still usually in tact, and when they weren't Isendra would wait patiently and down another one of those red vials or else the ones with blue liquid while he did his job in scrounging up the gold coins, one by one.

He was starting to feel like a petty pickpocket with all the leather bags of coins he was collecting. The worst was when he picked up a severed hand of one of the shambling corpses with a rather nice ring on it. Isendra "oohed" over it and he knew it was too valuable to leave behind, so he bit his tongue and pried it off. This was all exactly what he signed up for, so he didn't complain.

"I think we've been here before." Izuku commented when he saw a particularly penis-shaped stalagmite he recognized from before.

Most people would probably just describe it as mushroom shaped and call it a day. But nope, that was definitely a penis. It even had that little indent at the middle and everything.

"You are correct, and yet this place is not yet cleansed. We must have missed a side chamber or else a fallen cowering in a nook we hadn't quite spotted." Isendra noted as the wall behind her shifted to a blue glow. "We may yet have to scour every cranny. It will be slow work, and very time consuming. But we must not let a single one..."

"GET DOWN!" Izuku yelled as a glowing blue creature phased through the wall behind her.

She ducked just in time to avoid her head being taken off by two clawed hands of yet another zombie, btu a very different one to what they had seen before.
Isendra rolled away from the assailant to his side and assumed her attack position. The firebolt flew from her hands almost before they came together and this time, unliked all the other times she had thrown one, it erupted into a maelstrom around the glowing blue zombie. Said maelstrom of flames then parted like the read sea as the fiery undead ripped the spell apart with his bare hands and continued advancing on them.

"Get back Izuku!" Isendra ordered.

He obeyed, backing away to exactly the kind of nook they had discussed a fallen hiding in just moments earlier.

The blue zombie, which he was almost willing to call radioactive in appearance, focused its entire attention on Isendra as she backed away from it. Er slow backwards walk, as they had both done with previous zombies in that damned cave, almost got her killed as this one was a bit faster than the ones they had encountered so far. It was still exceptionally slow, being a tortious to the snails that were the other undead, but the speed difference was enough to catch Isendra flat-footed as she stumbled backwards away from the creature.
When it swiped with two flaming hands, flames that Izuku could tell it was producing as opposed to suffering from, she had already fallen out of its range and did yet another roll away.

The gale of ice she threw back at the fiery abomination was the largest he had seen from her to date, and coated not only it but every stalactite above in solid ice. As was her style she followed the gale with yet another firebolt, this one aimed at the ceiling. The hail of ice-covered blades of stone pelted the fiery corpse like rain of giant arrows and yet Isendra stilled backed away further as if expecting the onslaught to be insufficient. She was correct.

As it had with the cave wall before it simply phased through the mound of stone and ice it found itself in, though it had clearly been injured by Isendra's quick thinking based on the thick, puss-filled wounds from its shoulders and abdomen. Isendra tried for another firebolt and this time it worked, exploding against the creatures chest like it had with the many other zombies and cauterized its wounds. Not that it could bleed to death, of course.

After the fireball hit the being one again erupted in flames of its' own and Izuku realized what its quirk, erm, magical ability was. Elemental adaptation of some kind along with some kind of spectral ability. Powerful, but easily exploited and Isendra was smart enough to do exactly that, alternating between a weak fireball and ice gale as soon as the undead changed.

Then it just completely nuked their preconceptions by lunging at her with both claws while arcing lightning off of its body.

Okay, so it's elemental adaptation was random? Or else controlled, but being undead Izuku doubted it could consciously decide what element it attacked with, else it wouldn't have banged its head against the first and ice wall for so long and allowed Isendra to wipe the floor with it for so long.
The lunge itself missed, but the long arcs of lightning got her and sent her to the ground twitching as her body was racked with the seizure-like effects of being electrocuted. She didn't even scream as she fell, but he knew all the same that she was still conscious and alive.
Izuku felt panic rise up in his chest as the electric blue zombie bared down on the now disabled Isendra, and that panic drove him to drop the pack and dump its contents onto the ground. He pushed aside the newly acquired sabers and daggers, opting instead for the bow Kashya had trained him with and the pitifully small arrows he had spent so many hours practicing with.

She had said they were meek and only useful for practice. She had said that they, and by extension he, would not be strong enough to kill. But he notched arrow and aimed all the same. He focused on what Kashya had taught him. He took a deep breath and slowly released it, waiting for his body to steady and be still by the exhale before releasing.

His shot landed right at the base of the zombie's skull, or top of its' neck if you prefer, and pierced right through it leaving nothing but the fletching visible to Izuku. The blow stopped the shambling corpse ion its track and for a single second Izuku thought he might have taken it down as it swayed in place.

Then it turned around and looked directly at him, foregoing the usual human movement of searching for him with its eyes.

Oh...

Oh, shit!

Izuku only then realized that he was crouched in a nook, in a cave, at a back wall with no exit save for the one behind the undead abomination now bearing down on him. He was as good as dead. So he did what any cornered animal would do. He lashed out.

The small quiver he had brought with him was quickly emptied into the glowing monstrosities neck, each arrow lodging in the jugular or Adam's apple. All ten of his arrows jutted out from his throat almost comically, and yet it continued its' slow advance towards him. Izuku couldn't fathom how its brain was still sending commands to the rest of its body when its spine was clearly severed from the base of its skull, and yet his brain still tried to fathom it all the same thus losing him precious seconds he didn't have.

Throwing the bow aside he picked up one of the short swords he'd recently acquired at held it at length pathetically. He had no training with the weapon, and the best he expected to do was swing it like the wood-chopping axe he had become adept at, for what little good that would do. And yet, he set his mind to do exactly that.

"AAAAAAHH!" He screamed in what he hoped was an intimidating war cry and charged.

Fire erupted from behind the creature as a firebolt struck it square in the back, bringing it to its knees. Izuku charged on anyways and brough the short sword upon its neck with all the force his newly hardened body could muster and removed it from the creature's shoulders, the near dozen arrows already having severed most of the bone and connective tissue keeping it there.

Izuku knew the creature had died from the fireball, both in the back of his mind and in the forefront, and yet the triumphant whoop escaping his throat as the foe slumped to its side and ceased movement felt deserved all the same.
The adrenalin rushing through his body was making him shake like a hypothermia victim and no amount of deep breathing could stop it. It was so wholly different of a physical and emotional reaction to the fallen he had killed months go that it scared him, and yet that fear didn't alleviate the raw energetic excitement flowing through him. He could run a marathon and kickbox a bear in that very moment and not even feel winded from it.

"It's okay Izuku. Take as long as you need." He heard Isendra say from near him, but he didn't look at her.

He instead focused on his breathing and lowered himself to the ground. On his hands and knees he tried to regain control of his body and mind. breath in. Breath out. do it again. And again. He didn't know how long he stayed like that but when he was finally calmed he looked up to see Isendra examining an entire bandolier of potion vials she had taken off of the fallen undead, opening and sniffing them like perfumes.

So she'd already had enough time to strip the glowing one of valuables without him. Some pack mule he turned out to be.

"I think I'm fine." He told her as he stood up on shaky legs.

"No, you are not. But you will be in time. Either way, you did an excellent job this evening." Isendra said consolingly as she put the bandolier down. "This place is cleansed. Let us patch ourselves up, pack our misbegotten prizes and be on our way. Pass me a mana and healing potion, would you?"

Izuku let out another deep breath and turned to the pile of crap he had poured onto the ground minutes earlier. Thankfully he had been somewhat organized in his looting and kept the potion vials in the side pockets while throwing everything else in the main cavity so he hadn't trashed any of them on the ground in his earlier panic. Digging into said side cavities he found one of both red and blue vials and walked them over to her.

"Thank you. Take all of this back to the pack and get everything back in. Maybe drink a little mana potion as well." She instructed. "Coming down from a fight or flight can leave anybody exhausted, and mana potions serve as a good stamina boost. Or so married couples have told me."

Izuku suspected that last bit was a joke, but it went right over his head and he knew it was in poor manners to ruin a joke by asking for an explanation, so he let it go. Either way he took the bandolier and shuffled back over to the pack. Stuffing all of the blades, leather clothing and bags of coins took much less time than he expected and a few minutes later he rested against the bag with one of the blue vials in hand. As soon as he did so he all of a sudden felt like he had gone through with that marathon run and fist fight with a bear and the exhaustion hit him all at once.

Isendra was laying against a rock wall with her eyes closed doing some controlled breathing exercise or another.

If this was how he was feeling after that one fight he could only imagine how she felt after bulldozing the entire cave of demons and zombies by herself. And they still had a few hours walking to get back to the encampment before they could sleep. It would be sleep well earned.

Removing the cork from the small blue bottle he pinched his nose before taking a long sip from it. He was surprised to find it didn't taste awful. He wouldn't call it pleasant either, just strange. It almost tasted like the blue Crocoade electrolyte drink if it were watered down and had the tingly sensation of mint. He liked it.

The full body burning sensation that followed, on the other hand, he did not like. The same burning sensation he had felt since that first night in the meadow returned with a vengeance and his bones were suddenly made of molten lead surround by red hoy coals for flesh.

He screamed and thrashed and the stone ground as the burning sensation overtook all sensation and thought from he body. He both heard and felt Isendra's conern and closeness but couldn't make sense of her words or touch before blackness overtook him.

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.
Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room.
$25 per 500 words for smut/fetish material or for original fiction/nonfiction, meaning anything that is not fanfiction.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[bazerkerking]

I'm going to guess that mana potion Jumpstart his own body's mana production.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 6:
Apprenticeships
​

---

Izuku awoke to glorious rays of morning light piercing the toothy ceiling like blades and illuminated the cave around him. Isendra was there watching over him and noticed his reawakening.

"You had a poor reaction to the mana potion." She told him helpfully.

Izuku remembered the poor reaction clearly enough that he merely nodded in agreement. Who ever heard of an energy drink that knocks you unconscious?

"So much for saving you time." Izuku moaned as he sat up.

The burning pain wasn't as severe as it had been the evening before, and it certainly wasn't all consuming like it had been after drinking the blue vial.

"I would argue that it was mostly my fault. It is a lesson learned for the future, to assume your origins make nothing a normal affair." Isendra said. "Besides, I left your work for you. I believe you have some pillaging to do."

Izuku looked and, sure enough, his pack sat where he had left it and the bodies remained unpilfered. He got to work on the formerly glowing undead.

He found another gold ring on the corpse, which he added to the large sack of gold in his pack. It was starting to get heavy so he hoped they didn't find any gold ingots there too. More interestingly was the hilt of a sword extruding from his trapezoid like somebody had buried a sword into him at the spot. Turns out, somebody had and with a mighty heave he retrieved the sword from the body.

The very tip of the short sword had broken off on some bone or other and he looked to Isendra to see if she wanted him to keep it. It was rather clean and well-maintained otherwise. It even seemed to glow just a little bit.

"Let me have a look at that." She instructed, reaching out a hand.

Izuku handed her the short sword and she examined it carefully. Her eyes focused on the edge of the blade and broken tip in particular, as if she were deciphering the faint glow around the object itself. She eventually sighed in disappointment.

"It is ensorcelled." She told him. "Enchanted to repair itself over time. It's a good find, but not life changing. We shall sell it to Gheed."

She handed it back to him and he put it in the bag, after wrapping it in the leather shirt they had found, of course.
"Don't forget the wands." She told him.

"Wands?" Izuku asked.

She pointed out two sticks embedded into the undead's stomach. Izuku removed them to find the sticks were thicker at one end and tapered to a point. Crude handles were carved into the larger sides. So these were ensorcelled too? And like the sword looked to have been put there deliberately, almost surgically, instead of in self-defense from the zombie's victims.

"Why are there items inside of the undead?" Izuku asked.

"Because that is part of the process of creating an undead for the lazy or untalented." She told him. "A dead body is a thing, not a person. A cheap way to enchant an object is to implant it with another enchanted object. So, necromancers who are not strong enough to raise the dead by their own power will embed enchanted items into corpses to fuel the reanimation spell. As we saw here, it can sometimes have unexpected effects."

"So, the sticks are magic as well?" He asked.

"Yes. I am sure Akara can tell us in what way they are magical when we return. Are you certain you can carry all of this back?" She asked, concernedly.

"I am the pack mule. It is my job, so I have to be able to do so." Izuku said with a shrug.

It turned out not to be too much for him. The last few months of continuous hard labor had paid off, and the several hour trip back to the Rogue Encampment was a breeze. They made the trip in comfortable silence, enjoying the morning sun and a cool breeze that chose to come through the moors.

The wooden walls had just appeared above the horizon when Isendra finally broke the comfortable silence.

"You are very sensitive to magic." She said without prompting.

"I am?" He asked.

"Indeed. You passed out from drinking a mana potion." She told him, before elaborating at his confused look. "A mana potion restores a person's mana, the fuel by which spells are powered. The only reason it would make you pass out is if it caused an overflow of mana within you. Tell me, what did you feel?"

"Burning." Izuku said honestly. "It was like the burning sensation I've been feeling since the first night."

Isendra raised an eyebrow at him.

"You have felt magic in your body since first arriving in the Blood moor?" She asked. "Yet more proof that your fanciful tale is true. If magic does not exist where you come from, it would make sense for you to be sensitive to it. Like somebody raised in the Frozen Seas, never knowing anything but cold being warped to the Dry Steppes in the middle of summer."
Izuku translated the names of the new places as "Antarctica" and "Sahara" respectively.

"Tell me, what do you believe you should be paid for your work with me over the evening." She asked. "And do not worry about your passing out. As I said, it was my fault."

Izuku had to really think on that one. In terms of actual work he had done he felt like he deserved more money than less, but in terms of what value he actually brought to the mission he realized he deserved very little. If anything, he had slowed her down but saved her the discomfort of searching the bodies and carrying the spoils back.

"Five percent?" Izuku concluded after putting what felt like the right amount of time into considering the question.

"You have good business sense and a fair evaluation of your worth." Isendra told him. "You will receive your five percent and, because I am generous, the leather armor will be yours. I realize it's just a bit too large for you, but you will be growing by quite a bit over the next few years. By the time you have the funds to get proper armor you may even be too big for the set."

Izuku nodded gratefully, but internally did not like the idea of wearing said armor. It smelled of the Fallen, like rotten eggs, and he was squeamish about wearing the clothes of a dead man, even if he didn't know who it was that the fallen had killed for it. Like many other of his squeamish tendencies, he would have to get over it.

"They've returned unharmed!" An archer at the bridge yelled to the crowd already gathered at the other side.

Obviously, they had spotted them coming ahead of time.

"Out of my way." They heard Kashya's voice cut through the small crowd.

The crowd parted at her words and she marched through and over the bridge to confront Isendra.

"Well?" Kashya demanded.

"The Den of Evil has been purged completely." Isendra confirmed with a bow. "And young Midoriya is now a warrior in the making."

Kashya made an ugly face.

"I don't care if you risk your own life, but by what right did you have to risk his life?" Kashya demanded, pointing to Izuku. "He is just a boy!"

"What right? I would say the right of his life debt to me. His life is mine to do with what I please." Isendra said almost heartlessly. "And he shall be a man very soon."

Um, how soon was very soon? He hadn't thought to ask but a society of people in a medieval or maybe even pre-roman standard of civilization might have a frighteningly low age of consent. Were they expecting him to marry and provide for one of the rogue ladies in the camp at twelve years old? The youngest of them was over twice his age!

"She didn't actually force me to go with her, she's just being confrontational." Izuku finally opted to step in with a bored voice. "Probably because she just did a great service to your community and instead of thanking her you try to confront her about not refusing me when I bulldozed my way into her mission and demanded she take me along."

He had to wonder at the emotional maturity of the people on this world, seeing as he felt suddenly empathetic with his bored middle school teacher when the students were being particularly rowdy.

Kashya and Isendra, both turned slightly red in the face at his dressing down, opened their mouths to attack him verbally instead of each other, and were promptly silenced by uproarious laughter. Izuku recognized the booming voice as Warriv's and turned in time to see him stumbling towards them.

"The stones on the young lad! Just completely calling out your posturing like that. I need to play cards with you sometime kid." Warriv managed to get out between two long fits of laughter. "Come on kid, you need a bath, a meal and a rest. I'll get the metal tub so we can make it nice and hot for ya."

Warriv pushed past Kashya and clasped Izuku by the shoulders to drag him inside the Encampment. Leaving Isendra and Kashya to glare at each other.

That morning Izuku discovered that the encampment did, in fact, have the means to provide a hot bath. He was practically boiled alive in the metal tub Warriv retrieved from one of the wagons at the perimeter. He simply placed it on top of a few logs next to the river before filling it up bucket by bucket, then merely lit the logs. Low tech though it may have been, the experience was divine after months of washing in the ice-cold river.

He was allowed a quick nap after that and when he woke up he was confronted by Gheed mid-piss.

"The council of angry women will see you now, kid." The merchant told him, pointing in the general direction of the fire pit.

Izuku finished up then made the short trip to where he suspected this mysterious council would be waiting for him. Sure enough, sitting around the unlit fire pit were Isenda, Kashya and Akara.

"We have drafted a contract of apprenticeship." Isendra told him. "That you are to be my apprentice. That in exchange for your services as my pack mule, along with all other duties I will expect from you as a companion on dangerous missions, I will train you as best I can."

Kashya held out said contract for him to see it and he motioned for her to hand it to him. She did so and he read it. It turned out to be exactly what he expected. This was a contract of indentured servitude, exactly the form of apprenticeship everybody from masons to surgeons took up in the past. It flat out said he was to serve her in any way she ordered him for the next six years. He was not entitled to any pay, though this was Isendra so he knew she was generous anyways, but he was entitled to any and all training she could provide.

His father had warned him about job contracts with the "any additional tasks as required", that if you do contract work you clearly specify your duties and upon being asked for more you charged more. But Izuku wasn't in Twenty First century Japan anymore. Hell, he was pretty sure outright slavery was both legal and well-regarded on this new planet, so he was pretty sure this was a great deal for his current situation.

"I would like an additional clause." Izuku said, looking pointedly at Isendra. "That the contract lasts for six years, or until you find a way to get me back home safely. Whichever comes first."

Isendra gave him a smiling look of understanding and nodded in complete agreement.

"I can amend the contract to match this change." She informed him. "But you do understand the terms of the contract? You belong to her and serve her. In exchange she teaches you everything, though she can outsource your teaching to others as needed. You protect each-other with your lives."

"Yup. I caught onto all of that, and it's more than fair. Because Isendra is more than fair and I trust her." He said with a shrug.

Isendra didn't show any reaction to his words other than by sitting up straighter. She wasn't the type to smirk, but Izuku could tell she wanted to then.

"Are there any other changes either of you want me to make? I will not rewrite it again." Akara demanded of the two.
They both shook their heads and Akara disappeared back to her tent.

"We shall sign it tomorrow, today I teach you the fine arts of bartering and cleaning the smell of Fallen out of clothes." Isendra told him before walking away and motioning for him to follow.

Together they walked back to his tent where he had left the pack of spoils. He donned it and followed her to Gheed's little shop. He looked like he had been expecting them. He had a large tarp laid out with areas marked for weapons, precious metals and gems, armor and magic.

Isendra and Izuku dumped the contents of the pack onto the ground and together they tossed everything from the evening before into their respective piles. As they did so, Gheed took notes on a pad, muttering to himself the whole while. When they finally had it all roughly organized they waited patiently as the merchant did whatever math he needed doing. Izuku caught him muttering about subtracting the cost of cleaning it all and transporting them but the rest of his mutterings had to do with him contemplating what sounded like the names of cities. He clearly knew the best markets to sell each type of item for the most profit, and had a good mind for the cost of transporting his goods to each locale.

"For the whole lot, I'll give you nine hundred gold coins." Gheed declared when his math was finished.

"You have yourself a deal." Isendra agreed instantly.

This was bartering? Izuku had expected a crash course in haggling. This was just pawning off your trash.
Gheed handed Issendra nine entire coin purses, leading Izuku to believe he kept them organized in differently sized sacks. Isendra handed him one of them.

"Take out twenty five and keep the remainder." Isendra instructed him.

Izuku did the mental arithmetic in his head and he realized instantly that this didn't add up.

"But five percent of nine hundred is forty five, not seventy five." He told her.

"True, but you are forgetting the six hundred gold coins you collected last night." She told him. "And seventy five is five percent of fifteen hundred."

He redid his math and found out she was correct. He counted out the twenty five like she had instructed and handed them back to her.

"Now, I believe the young man would like to purchase some charcoal oil." Isendra told Gheed.

"I would?" Izuku asked.

"You would." Isendra confirmed.

"And what scented oil would you like it in?" Gheed asked. "I have lavender, mint, sage and rosemary."

Izuku shrugged.

"Um. Mint, I guess." He said.

It turned out charcoal was great for removing the smell of sulfur from fabric and leather. And so after paying Gheed four gold coins for a pint of a charcoal paste made with mint oil he spent the rest of his afternoon scrubbing it into his newfound leather armor with a horsehair brush.

By the time he finished Isendra had come to collect him for dinner, which as always was being eaten communally at the fire pit in the center of the encampment.

"Do I wash it off now?" Izuku asked Isendra as he sat down beside her with a turkey drumstick and plate of rice.

"Not for another week." Isendra told him. "For now, leave it in the sun which will help to disinfect it further. When you finally wash it off in seven days it will smell divine."

Izuku mentally translated this into meaning "You won't be seeing any danger for another week at the earliest." and "You will be having a lot of work and training here in the encampment." Both meanings were expected, but still disappointing.

"Your training begins first thing in the morning, as soon as we sign the contract." She told him. "Akara offered her assistance in training you as thanks for our work cleansing the Den. When I am off on patrols or doing work without you, you are to respect her as you would me and learn from her as you would me."

Izuku nodded as he chewed on his meat and this new information.

"Soooo. Report to Akara's tent first thing in the morning?" He concluded.

"First thing in the morning." Isendra confirmed.

---

"Sign the contract and we can begin." Akara said by way of greeting as soon as Izuku stepped on her patch of land.
Izuku blinked and looked around. Finding no sign of his master he looked back to Akara but took the contract in his hands without complaint.

"Where is Isendra?" he asked as he skimmed the document for any changes.

Finding everything the same except for the added sentence he requested he signed at the bottom.

"She was sent scouting just before dawn. Something too dangerous for you to join in just yet. So, your instruction is left to me for today." Akra told him. "She believes you will be a prodigy of magic like her, and has told me you have a hypersensitivity to Mana. I am eager to see if she is correct."

Isendra was a prodigy of magic? She did seem young compared to the other adults in the encampment, but he'd never been rude enough to ask her age.

"So, what will we be doing today?" Izuku asked.

"Today, we will be learning the absolute basics. The art of meditation and feeling the mana within your body." Akara told him. "And that starts with you learning how to breath."

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.
Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room.
$25 per 500 words for smut/fetish material or for original fiction/nonfiction, meaning anything that is not fanfiction.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 7:

Meditations and Scouting​

---

Izuku breathed in deeply through his nose and slowly out of his mouth. Seven, seven and seven. Inhale for seven seconds, hold for seven seconds, exhale for seven seconds. Repeat.

It was the first and most basic of the breathing exercises that Akara had taught him, and he had done nothing but practice it for four days. Okay, that wasn't true. He also still spent his early mornings practicing with the bow and knife, and he offered a helping hand with absolutely anybody in the encampment. He still worked on making arrows, fletching and all, and had even been upgraded to knapping arrowheads out of river stone. It was an even more cathartic art than making the shafts and fletching, if such a thing were possible.

But studying underneath Akara? That wasn't cathartic at all. Holed up in her dark, smoky tent with the smell of all manner of incense, Izuku couldn't even begin to identify, but several of which he suspected wouldn't be legal back home.

"I have never seen somebody become so stressed by breathing techniques." Akara commented from her cauldron. "The whole point of that one is to make you calm and relaxed, how is it doing the opposite?"

Izuku grumbled something about expecting magic training to be more magical, and thankfully Akara found the complaint funny.

"Isendra warned me you had an intense reaction to the mana potion she gave you, so I expected you to struggle." Akara admitted, standing up to walk over to him. "But after four days the amusement of watching you be afraid of your own magic has faded. It is time you grew out of it."

Izuku cowered underneath her glare as she stood over him and crossed her arms.

"You described to both of us a burning sensation. What kind of burning is it? Is it like the burning of a rash, of spicy food or fire?" She asked.

"Actual fire." Izuku told her. "Moving through my body like a liquid."

"It is peculiar but everybody's relationship with magic is unique. OR at least as unique as unique can be. We are graduating from breathing and moving onto focusing on the mana within your body before directing it." Akara said. "You already have an advantage by being able to feel your magic so acutely, so you must become either inured to the discomfort of it or in some way adapt to it until it is no longer unpleasant."

She turned around and walked over to a chest in the corner. It was one of several littering her tent and the smallest. It was also the oldest in appearance. Akara dug around inside it and eventually retrieved a stick, er, wand. Right. Wands are real. She retrieved a wand with a crystal at the end of it.

"This was my first, failed, attempt at creating a wand of identification." Akara told him. "It cannot identify magic at all, merely detect it. If I hold it against a magical object it will glow blue, and that's about all it's useful for."

Izuku nodded to show he was following her.

"However, it can also detect magic inside a person's body if they are actively using it. The crystal I chose was of poor quality, hence why it cannot help with any detailed identification, but this had the surprising benefit of making it significantly more durable. High quality crystals used for identification magic will break upon being used, they are that delicate."

Izuku retrieved his notebook from beside him and wrote that down. Identification crystals will break when used. Good to know.

"So, what? Are you going to have me hold it against different parts of my body and try to make it glow?" Izuku asked.

Akara blinked at him.

"That is exactly what I am going to have you do. I just want you to focus on bringing that burning sensation up to your skin where the crystal is touching. Focus on the feeling of the stone and your mana. Once it lights, move to a different body part. We will be starting with your fingertips, then the different segments of your fingers, palms and move inward from there." Akara instructed.

She handed him the wand and Izuku took it, holding the tip to his index finger. Then he breathed. Seven seconds inhaling, seven seconds holding, seven seconds exhaling. Deciding he was sufficiently calmed he rubbed the smooth stone with his index finger to try and focus on the exact spot he felt it on his skin. From there it was a simple matter to split his focus on the now ever-present burning sensation of magic beneath the skin's surface and slowly pulled it to the surface.

He opened his eyes to find the stone was unchanged. Hm.

"Oh, you're going to be here for a while." Akara told him as he frowned at his finger.

She turned out to be right in that claim. He spent the rest of that morning trying his hardest to make the crystal light up without an ounce of progress. It was well into the afternoon, after being forced by Akara to take a lunch break, that it finally happened.

"Misses Akara! Look!" Izuku called out to the woman.

She looked up from the book she was still reading and she did a double take when she spotted the soft glow of the crystal against the tip of his index finger.

"That took you five hours." Akara informed him in an almost disappointed tone.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Izuku apologized. "I'll try harder to not take so long."

The deadpan look she gave him, with her mouth slightly ajar, almost looked offended. The angry look she followed it up with when he switched to his thumb and immediately made the crystal like could have vaporized tungsten, but for the life of him he couldn't understand what he'd done to anger her.

By nightfall he could make the crystal in the wand light up with the tip of each finger and every single segment as well, but strangely enough not the knuckles which she told him to skip for now anyways.

The next day he focused on his palms and arms. The former only took a few minutes to be able to do relatively easily, but each arm took the better part of an hour. The inner wrists, where he could feel his pulse, were the easiest to channel mana through to light the crystal. But the elbows? Both were a nightmare until he held it to the funny bone tendon beneath the elbow. But when he switched arms it wasn't any easier or faster the second time.

A week of training with Akara passed without any sign of his real master, or was it mistress? He would have to clear up what to call her when she got back from her scouting mission. But in the week of her absence, he had managed to make the wand light up from nearly anywhere on his face, chest, legs and even every individual toe. Any actual bony parts of his body were nearly impossible to focus mana through, as if the magic was made by his flesh or blood in particular. Or maybe it was water based? Were lakes, rivers and the ocean more magical than dirt and stone? These were questions he decided to save for Isendra as Akara's scowl grew angrier by the day and she refused to tell him what he was doing to enrage her.

"Aside from the bony parts of me, what are the hardest places to channel mana?" Izuku asked.

"Your scalp and your back." Akara said in a monotone.

"Oh. Should I do that next?" Izuku asked.

"Do as you please, child. You're ahead of schedule." Akara said.

"I am? How far ahead of schedule?" Izuku asked.

Akara stared at him blankly before turning around, taking a seat and picking up a book before promptly ignoring his existence. This was fast becoming the norm.

And so, for the next two days he practiced with his back and scalp. He would occasionally try again with the bone of his elbows, knuckles and the like but never made any progress.

He spent hours sitting cross-legged in front of Akara's human-body sized and shaped mirror trying to make the crystal glow again while holding it against his head or the back of his shoulders. The latter made for an uncomfortable position to hold for hours at a time, but the former was nearly as impossible to pull off as the aforementioned bony regions of his body. Serious, why were those regions so hard to channel mana through? Was it because they had no nerves in them?

---

"It's time for you to learn your first spell." Akara began their tenth day together by saying.

"My first spell?!" Izuku said excitedly.

"Your first spell." Akara confirmed. "The first spell any person ought to learn, though usually do not do so until several years into their training. So to answer your question from a few days ago, you are three years ahead of schedule."

Whoa. That seemed like a lot!

"Is that mostly because I already know reading, writing and arithmetic?" Izuku asked.

"That makes up about ninety percent of the reason for your abridged training, yes." Akara told him. "I would have continued your academic training in at least mathematics, but Isendra told me you already know geometry and something called Algebra?"

"Well. Not all of algebra. But some of it, yeah"

It was weird that the people of this world don't even have that, let alone trigonometry, calculus or higher mathematical fields. It was a huge wake up call for him to learn he was now officially one of the greatest mathematicians on the planet. This wasn't saying much when everybody was blown away by his mere ability to write his own name. Was victory by default still a victory? It didn't feel like a victory.

"The light spell will require you to master the fundamental steps to casting most spells." Akara continued. "You bring the mana out of your body, usually into an area between your hands for control, and then turn that mana to a purpose you intend. In this case making light from it. You need only be able to make your mana glow on your skin then the next step is to first bring the mana out and control it from outside of your body."

Fascinating. Was it a coincidence that the first spell was a clear parable to the first quirk? Surely not. But more interesting was her description of how spells were cast. Mana was just fuel for spells, it didn't conjure or create fire or lightning or ice. Fire needs air, heat and fuel. Mana must be able to easily transfer into heat or light electric or kinetic energy. What about biochemical energy? Could people metabolize mana and live off of their own life force for extended periods of time?

"We really need to do something about your mumbling problem." Akara eventually interrupted his thoughts. "But you're on the right track. Magical theorists since the dawn of time have been trying to come up with a unifying theory for the nature and function of mana. So far there is no consensus, let alone proof. Which I used to find rather terrifying to learn, as using such a great power without knowing anything about it is something all magicians are taught to never do."

That was good advice. Izuku would make certain to follow it, just as soon as he finished learning how to completely break it by wielding this arcane power to reduce a few thousand demons to piles of ash.

"No, you have pretty thoroughly mastered moving mana around your body. Now all I want you to do is make your skin glow where the mana touches it. Then we can move on." Akara instructed.

She proceeded to walk around the inside of her tent extinguishing her candles to make the room as dark as possible, save for one candle next to her reading chair. She then drew a curtain around herself to dim the light from the candle coming towards him but he could still see her from where he sat through the humanoid mirror to his left. Likewise, she could see him.

She returned to her usual habit of reading her book and ignoring his existence and Izuku returned to his usual habit of trying to teach himself what she had just promised to teach him. And so, he began channeling mana into his skin.

---

Isendra trudged back into the encampment late that evening. Her week and a half away had been thoroughly unproductive, but it was a necessary unproductivity.

The monastery and east gate required watching. Everyone needed constant visual confirmation of Andarial's whereabouts. Surprise! She's still there. In the monastery. Protecting the east gate and perverting the holy land to increasingly twisted and hellish mockeries. But she did her duty, and for an entire week she remained hidden near the monastery, watching and documenting all she saw.

She was so very eager to hand in the journal she had filled out and get a good night's sleep. Maybe she could even convince Warriv to loan her his tub for a hot bath? Surely, she had earned it.

She crossed the stone bridge looking longingly at the cold water and track of towels but stopped when she saw the bandaged figure at the other side of the bridge. For a moment she thought a survivor of a fallen ambush had been brought in and bandaged up, and his sad state made him look like he was mourning. But she recognized that mess of untamable hair beneath the burns.

"Young one?" Isendra asked.

The figure looked up at her greeting and sure enough the constantly worried and over-analyzing eyes of Izuku Midoriya met her own.

"What happened to you?!" Isendra demanded.

"Oh, um. I happened to me." Izuku told her cryptically. "And I happened to Akara's tent too."

"What did you do? You were just supposed to be learning the basics of meditation and maybe start towards channeling mana. Why do you look like you were doused in lamp oil and lit on fire?" Isendra demanded of her pupil.

"Oh. Well I did those things. Learned the breathing techniques, a little bit of meditation and all of the mana channeling stuff. Still can't do it on my scalp or bony parts, but Miss Akara decided I was ready to learn the light spell." Izuku explained.

Isendra stared at him. She had only been gone for a week and a half. There was no way in all of the heavens and hells he mastered channeling mana, a skill that takes most half a decade to master, in that time. Let alone advance towards learning any spells.

"I was trying to make my skin glow, but instead lit myself on fire." Izuku finished. "Along with Akara, Akara's books, Akara's tent, and a lot of her potions which turned rather explosive. I am in temporary exile from the village until you return."

Isendra stared at him some more.

"But I DID eventually figure out how to make my skin glow. See!" Izuku claimed, lifting his arm up.

A bright blue light erupted from his unbandaged hand

"That is not light you are producing. You are merely channeling enough mana through your skin to become visible and provide light." Isendra told the boy.

"Oh. That explains why it's so exhausting, I guess." He said before cutting off the flow of mana.

She returned to staring at the boy slack jawed, absolutely baffled how a child could be this much of a prodigy and this much of a moron. Then she imagined Akara spending a week and a half trying to teach such a prodigy in the manner sorcerer's are traditionally trained. She scowled in empathy and ducked into her coin purse.

"Come along. I need to go pay restitution to Akara. It looks like I'll have to be solely responsible for your training in the future." Isendra told him

---

Two days later saw Isendra taking Izuku out on his first scouting mission. They were to relieve the team of rogues guarding the ancient burial grounds. It was considered the safest place for a first scouting mission.

"She hates me." Izuku told her.

"She does not hate you!" Isendra consoled the now fully-healed boy. "She envies you. So do I, for that matter."

"She said if you ever try to pawn me off on her again she'll kill herself and then us both, which I think she meant because it is not longer beyond my imagination for a sorcerer to use magic to kill and reanimate themselves as a deadlier threat than in mortal life." Izuku countered.

Isendra decided not to comment on the existence of such magics. Nor her anger at Akara for insinuating the existence of such magics to her young pupil. Sorcerer's weren't supposed to learn about that kind of thing until they were much more experienced and disciplined. Then again, with all of the demons and undead running around it was difficult to keep the existence of such foul magics secret from anybody these days.

"Izuku, you have been blessed with a shortcut through your magical education that makes even my lightning-fast ascension through the ranks seem slow." Isendra explained to the boy. "Being able to essentially skip the longest and hardest step of becoming a wielder of arcane power is quite possibly the most unfair boon I have ever heard of. And I worry that this privilege will spoil you and prevent you from advancing at some higher level of magic."

Izuku lowered his head in, of all things, shame at her backhanded praise. She was trying to avoid stroking his ego too much, not make him feel bad. This child was impossible to read, let alone predict even in regards to basic social interaction.

"But, even if you turn out to be completely incompetent in all other aspects of becoming a sorcerer, you will still become a great one all the same. For no other reason than your ability to feel and harness mana with the same ease with which you breathe." Isendra said more nicely.

Izuku nodded along, his face scrunched in consternation. It was a look he wore often.

"Wait, you were a prodigy too?" Izuku asked.

"Indeed. And much like you I suffered for it. Being at the top means everyone below you will hate you." Isendra explained. "And I worry about your future because I myself suffered from plateaus and walls I could not overcome because I did not struggle early on in my training. I did not gain the ability to work hard and overcome challenges, so that when I finally found something challenging in my arcane studies it nearly destroyed me. In fact, I have yet to choose a specialization while my peers are all wielding higher magics in their chosen fields."

Izuku looked up at her.

"Specializations?" He asked.

"Most sorcerers specialize in a single type of magic. Necromancy, healing magics, scrying, or lightning." She explained. "Everybody must choose a specialization or risk becoming a jack of all trades like me using all manner of magic at a weak level, while specialists use one or two types of magic with much more power than I can manage. You, like many, seem to have been blessed with having your specialization chosen for you."

"Fire?" Izuku clarified.

"Indeed. To accidentally ignite yourself and all Akara owns may mean you have an affinity for fire. Many people with strong affinities have similar, though usually not as pronounced, accidents. You may turn out to be a fire mage above all else. You should still learn to use other spells, at least at a low level, for too much specialization becomes an exploitable vulnerability. But if you do turn out to be a fire specialist that will free me of one option of specialization to focus on another one." Isendra explained.

"Ohhh, you could specialize in ice then we could be like an Endeavor and Rei power duo!" The boy said excitedly.

"Endeavor?" Isendra asked. "Rei?"

"Second greatest hero ever. He is the embodiment of fire and nearly as powerful as All Might." Izuku told her. "He married a woman from the Himura family, an entire family of very powerful ice wielders. There's a legend that Endeavor accidentally hospitalized his first love when he kissed her, leaving a burn in the shape of his lips on her cheek. But it's just a legend, but the legend says he sought out Rei specifically because he could touch her without burning her, and she could touch him without causing frostbite."

Isendra's smile grew as the young man rambled, and she listened without interrupting. With them walking in the wide open moors with nobody nearby to hear she was happy to have him tell her all about his world.

"That is an adorable love story." Isendra admitted. "Is there a similar legend about this Rei? Did she turn her first fiancé into an ice stalagmite?"

Izuku laughed.

"Probably. This was all before I was born. I only know about it because I saw the Mini-Series on it."

"Mini-Series?" She asked.

"Oh. Um. Pictures that move and talk to tell stories. We call them motion pictures. There was one made about them going out and being heroes together, fire and ice, like everybody thought they would. But that never panned out. They started a family and lived a quiet life. She decided on homemaking, not hero work beside him."

Isendra suspected that whatever Izuku was trying to describe was far different from what she held in her mind. Remembering the boy's shirt and the obscenely handsome man, she suspected these motion pictures must have looked and moved just as realistically as that image. Not for the first time she wondered if she could convince the boy to give or sell the shirt to her so she could ogle it in her down time.

She would have asked him then and there had they not reached the edge of the burial grounds and the fire pit where the rogue guard was stationed. Or, more accurately, where the rogue guards were supposed to be stationed.

The fire pit was unlit and wet, and looked to have been so for a while. No journal nor weapons, no personal belongings had been left. The entire place had either been abandoned or ransacked and the tracks covered. Isendra suspected the latter.

"Wasn't this place supposed to be guarded." Izuku asked worriedly.

"Arm yourself young one. We have fighting to do." Isendra said by way of answer.

"And rescuing?" Izuku asked hopefully. "Right?"

Isendra smiled down on him and his blatantly optimistic, arguably naive, question. She decided to let herself feel that same optimism. Why else have such a young and bright student if you do not allow yourself the emotional blessings of having a child around?

"And rescuing. Yes."

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.

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Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 8:

Blood Raven
​

---

Isendra crouched low as she squat-walked through the underbrush surrounding the burial grounds and Izuku crouched even lower as he followed her. He felt ridiculous waddling along by rotating his entire body with each step, and it was killer on his thighs, but if it kept them both alive and safe, he would suffer through it. He did make a mental not to work on training his legs more though.

Isendra held up a fist for him to stop and he did so. Peaking past her he saw why. A couple meters ahead of them, on the other side of a trench, was a red-haired woman flat on her stomach looking over the edge into the burial grounds.

"Flavie!" Isendra hissed to get her attention.

Get her attention she did, as the woman nearly jumped out of her skin as she spun around with her dagger drawn. The full body deflation when she recognized them and relaxed looked more emotionally taxing than the near heart attack Isendra had given her. After taking a deep breath and putting away her dagger she
made a shushing motion, followed by a "get down" motioned, followed by a "Come here" motion.

She was a rather erudite sign linguist.

Isendra went into a belly crawl and Izuku followed suit. He imagined it would have been a very uncomfortable journey had they not found the leather armor in that cave a couple weeks back. But as it was his stomach and arms didn't suffer from the many sharp twigs and hard stones as he crawled over them.

They came up to either side of Flavie and looked over the edge of their cover. Izuku felt bile at the sight which greeted him.

A tree of hanging women stood at the center of a graveyard. Each was strung up by their hands instead of the necks, so for all he knew they could still be alive. But they were certainly suffering if they were. Prowling around their still forms was a monster.

This monster appeared to be yet another woman, but she was much taller than the rogues she overlooked, and she wore a bird's skull for a helmet. The rest of her armor sported bony spikes that he suspected were coming out of her. More disturbing still was red vining mass covering her body that looked almost like higanbana flowers to Izuku, but which he suspected was congealed, tendriling blood. He didn't want to understand what kind of magic this was, but by the looks of the shambling, rotten corpses parading around
the graveyard and mausoleums, it wasn't difficult to guess.

"Is that? No, it can't be." Isendra gasped at the sight of the giantess before clenching her teeth in obvious rage. "Damn you Andarial."

Flavie motioned for them to retreat, and they did so, slowly crawling backwards on their stomachs which was an entirely new way of getting around to Izuku. When they got back over the hump behind them, they changed back to walking low to put some distance between themselves and the burial ground. Upon reaching a crop of trees they got right to strategizing.

"We stand zero chance of defeating Blood Raven, even in her undead form." Isendra said outright.

"And yet we must try." Flavie said. "The trip to camp and back would be nearly a week, and by then the prisoners on the tree will be dead and the monster wearing my sister's flesh will have an entire army of undead. We three stand a better chance of defeating her now than the entire camp has against her and the potential army she is rising."

Isendra nodded in consideration at her airtight argument, but it was very much an unhappy nod.

"Wait, those ladies on the tree are alive?" Izuku asked." Are you certain?"

"Positive. Their flesh needs to be tenderized before killing and turning them. The evils would have much more use of undead with the skills of our sisterhood than mindless, shambling corpses." Flavie explained.
Izuku looked to Isendra.

"By tenderize she is referring to a process of torturing a victim's flesh before killing them and reanimating them. Muscles remember, and by damaging the most-used muscles of a warrior you make certain that when they are made undead those muscles remember the combat skills from life." Isendra lectured. "So that when they turned undead, they will be just as skilled of archers as they were in life, instead of cannon fodder like the usual zombie."

That was horrible. That horrifying.

"The problem is I don't know if we have a right to get involved in this." Isendra says. "Our standing with Kashya is bad enough, to deny her the chance to put her best friend to rest will just cause more friction between us. But I suppose it must be done."

"Do you really believe saving six of our sister's lives, putting dozens of our fallen ancestors back to their eternal rest and freeing our greatest hero and Kashya's closest friend from her demonic enslavement will do anything other than endear you to us all?" Flavie countered. "If we succeed here, to any degree, then you will have completely earned her respect and the complete allegiance of the rogue sisterhood."

Isendra stood up a little straighter at Flavie's words and Izuku did the same.

"Will it even get you all to forgive me for nearly burning the entire place down?" Izuku asked.

"No!" Flavie hissed. "Never!"

When her mock venom died down to be replaced by a smirk Izuku realized she was joking, even at a time like this. If she could show sch bravery and levity then surely, he could too.

And so, he clenched his fist, raised it to chest level and grinned as wide as he could. All Might smiled in the face of danger. All Might made those he did evil feel weak and those who do good feel strong with his smile, and he would do the same.

"Let's go! We have to save those nice ladies. They don't have to suffer anymore, because we are here!"

They both nodded and got to work planning. Now that they had decided on what to do, they had to figure out how to do it.

"Izuku isn't ready to fight enemies like this yet, so his priority should be to sneak around and get to the prisoners." Flavie said.

"He is small, nimble and brave. I have full faith in my apprentice' ability to reach them unseen and free them. It will be our job to battle Blood Raven and draw the zombies towards us." Isendra agreed. "If the six of them join the battle we may have a chance."

"We already have several advantages that add up to a great chance of victory that you seem to be discounting." Flavie consoled. "In addition to the possible backup of six of our best, we have the element of surprise and the knowledge that Blood Raven is still a new undead, and thus weakened from as strong as she was in life. We are not battling the heroine who helped defeat diablo and free Tristram of his horrors."

Diablo? Tristram? Heroine? He'd have to ask for lectures on history from Isendra in the future. During their long walk through the wilderness.

"Then it is settled. you and I shall make battle with Blood Raven while Izuku frees your sisters. Then with the sister's aid we either defeat Blood Raven or flee to come back with reinforcements." Isendra decided with a nod.

Flavie reached into her belt and pulled out a hatchet which she then handed to Izuku.

"But I don't have any training with it." He complained.

"You will not be using it to defend yourself." Flavia informed him. "I have faith that you are just as capable of chopping rope as you are wood. Your job is to remain unseen, sneak past the undead, which should be an easy enough task, and free those ladies hanging from the tree."

Okay, that made more sense.

"You are more than capable of outrunning zombies." Isendra told him. "Even if you are seen, advance on anyways. Just do not get surrounded. You will be leaving us in a few moments and circling all the way around to the other side of the burial grounds. We will count to one hundred. When the count is finished, you will know based on the sound of battle."

Izuku nodded with every word as he fastened the hatchet to his own belt. It was such a simple plan, a simple course of action. Somehow, that simplicity made it feel all the more likely to succeed. It played to all of their strengths.

"I think you should actually go with him, at least part of the way." Flavie suggested. "You go to the right corner of the south side while I go to the left, we can cover each other and provide more points of distraction."

"That is good. Yes, that decreases the amount of trouble Izuku has to deal with and splits the enemy forces further." Isendra agreed. "If we stay together then Blood Raven only has one target, split up she has two. Should one of us fall we still have a chance. Should both of us fall Izuku will be in the clear to free the six and get them out. Two lives for six is a fair deal."

Geez that was morbid, what happened to the levity in the face of fear?

"Shall I go now?" Izuku asked.

"Yes." The two women said as one.

Isendra and Izuku took off to the right, moving carefully but quickly. With purpose. It was only a few dozen meters alter that they were due to split up. But before he continued on his own Isendra grasped him by the shoulder and looked him in the eyes.

"Be safe, not brave. Keep to the tombstones and underbrush. Most importantly, think things through before acting and should worst come to worst leave us behind and flee back to camp as fast as your little legs can take you." Isendra ordered. "If all else should fail you must survive tonight and get back to the encampment. It is vital that they know and send everything they have if we do not succeed."

Then, she ushered him away.

From there his feet took him. He ran at a crouch, keeping his spine curved and head down and staying close to the trench and the bushes growing from the swales on the outside. He wasn't even out of breath by the time he turned left onto the north side, nor was he out of time when he reached the center of said north side.
As he had when they found Flavie, he crawled along the ditch on his stomach until he reached the far swale and peeked over.

Everything was the same as the first time, but now with the anticipation of knowing what happens next. He cursed himself for not keeping count in his head, so he had no idea how much time he had left of the one hundred seconds. But when they ended, he got a very clear signal that it had.

Isendra had clearly been training since the fight in the cave, for the firebolt that collided with the undead Blood Raven exploded on her back with much more force and a much louder whoosh sound than the ones he had seen before. He was genuinely surprised it didn't sprawl the demoness out on her butt. But it did get the attention of Blood Raven and every shambling zombie in the graveyard.

"Join my army of the dead!'' Blood Raven's voice, as loud as Isendra's firebolt but as calm and steady as if she had spoken it from two feet away.

As one the undead turned and like a colony of ants filed towards his master beside theirs.

Izuku nearly leapt over the swale to charge for the tree before remembering Isendra's words. Thinking things through, he realized there could easily be other zombies lying in wait. Either because they were deaf and didn't know a battle had begun, or because they had been programmed to never leave their post no matter what happened around them. And so, he remained hidden, crawling on hands and knees to the nearest tombstone.

He looked over it and checked both ways as if expecting a freight truck to Isekai him again but spotted no lookouts or guards in the next leg of his journey so he sprinted to a gap between two mausoleums up ahead of him. As he did so he paid attention to the battle south of him.

For an undead abomination this Raven sure ran fast. She was already nearly upon Isendra when Flavie finally joined the fray and put an arrow between her shoulder blades to go with the nice third degree burns Isendra had gifted her.

Checking the way in front of him and finding it clear he made a beeline for a gravestone absolutely covered in thorny branches. His kept his arms around his head to let his leather armor protect him from the thorns. They did their job and when he was safely inside of them, he felt every hair on his head stand on end as bright white and blue light filled the horizon.

Peeking over this new headstone he saw waves of lightning arcing from Blood Raven to the handful of zombies that had been closest to the southeast end. the former slowed from the arcing electricity flowing through her body, the latter fell in piles of ashen bone.

Izuku couldn't stop the fist pump he made at the sight of the battle going well but did manage to choke the hoorah threatening to come out of his throat.

By now Flavie had gotten the attention of Blood Raven's army and it split up to pursue both Isendra and Flavie, leaving the prisoners completely unguarded. The plan couldn't have been going more perfectly, but he didn't let it get to his head.

Looking both ways one last time he untangled himself from the branches and sprinted to the last tombstone between him and the concrete separating the tree from the graves.

Right beside him was a pile of bows and full quivers, along with daggers, potions and the other personal effects of the rogues hanging from the tree. What torture it must have been, to see the means by which they could defend themselves so close at hand, yet so far. His opinion of demons descended further with each new cruelty he witnessed from their hands.

Ignoring the gear for now, he glanced past it to get a good look at the survivors, he could see they were doing their best to stand on their toes to relieve the stress from the ropes around their wrists. The one nearest him was trying to take advantage of the commotion by fighting against her bindings, and though she was red in the face from the exertion she made no progress. The woman next to her, on the other hand, was bleeding from countless wounds and seemed to be unconscious, if not dead.

Before daring to sprint the last of the way forward Izuku looked behind him to make sure nothing was going to blindside them from the north. Finding the way back and the way forward clear he thanked whatever gods Isendra worshipped and took off.

He withdrew both his dagger and his axe before sprinting towards the nearest struggling rogue.

She hardened her face and straightened at the sight of him running at her with weapons drawn but that war face dissolved into a smile of pure relief when she recognized him, and tears flooded her eyes. He ran right past her, dropping his dagger at her feet in a manner that guaranteed she saw it. From there he climbed up that tree so fast you'd think he had a monkey quirk. Shimmying up the branch she was on, he righted himself into a seated position, his thighs clenching the branch as tightly as his glutes could manage, and he swung his hatchet with both hands.

That one strike severed the knot and dropped her to the ground, where she fell into a crouch and snatched up his dagger in a single motion.

"You go clockwise!" He yell-whispered as he reached out with his left hand to the next branch.

He didn't watch to see her move along but did hear the sound of his blade tearing at the bindings of her most injured sister. He focused all of his attention on hacking at the knot on the next branch. Doing it one handed while steadying himself with the other meant it took him a few swings, but soon enough he had freed the second rogue and she fell too the ground.

"Get your weapons!" He yell-whispered at this one.

She didn't nod nor acknowledge him, merely sprinting towards the pile of gear that had been stripped from them.

He shimmied back down his branch to cross over to the next one but by the time he got there the first woman he had freed was already slicing the bindings on her wrist and he opted to climb back down and ready himself for a fight. The last one he'd freed returned by the time his feet met the ground and she was handing out bows and quivers to the still standing rogues.

"Young Midoriya, help Alexis if you have any healing salves or bandages." The first rogue he'd freed ordered as she slung her quiver over her shoulder and notched a bow. "Maria, guard them while we provide aid to Isendra and Flavie."

---

The woman who had retrieved the bows, Maria, walked with Izuku to where the most severely injured of the rogues had been left on the ground in a recovery position. Upon reaching her he dropped his pack and began rummaging around while Maria notched an arrow and turned her back to him in order to strike down any would-be attacker.

The symphony of bowstrings snapping and arrows whistling through the air told him that the army of undead would soon be greatly diminished, and with it Isendra and Flavie's workload. The unexpected success was making his heart pound faster in excitement than horror ever had.

Izuku took deep breaths to steady himself as he dug up his waterskin, bandages and two of the red potions he had been given by Isendra. Then thinking on it he also grabbed one of the blues.

Turning Alexis over on her back he surveyed the wounds. They were not fresh, but they were also not fatal or even bleeding deeply. Each cut had been deliberately made to avoid any veins or arteries, and certainly didn't touch any of the major ones. He checked her inner thighs, neck, armpits and shoulders meticulously and found they they were unharmed.

The cuts she did have were all shallow, but they were numerous. Criss-crossing her calves, thighs, biceps, traps, pectorals and even her face.

Tenderize indeed.

Akara had warned him about the dangers of using healing potions on old, unclean wounds. The risk of infection for new wounds was nearly nonexistent, but ones that had been open for hours exposed to the air, dust, dirt and other elements? Closing those with a potion was tantamount to killing the victim outright because you wouldn't be able to clean the wound later. And if he forced any down her throat to replenish her lost blood, he risked them all bleeding again which would make working on them harder.

His mind went right to the nail polish remover he had scavenged from the swamp months ago, but this was unhelpful as he had used it all to start a fire that first night. He didn't have anything else with disinfecting properties and he cursed himself for not taking up Gheed and Warriv's repeated offers of drink. They had all found it odd that he wouldn't touch beer or wine, let alone the vodka and brandy the two men somehow managed to smuggle in. He made a mental note to buy an entire wineskin of Vodka next time he saw Gheed.

Hell, he ought to buy honey while he was at it for the same reason.

He scoured his brain for anything at all he could use to clean the wounds before pouring the potion over them, but the only thing he could come up with was...

"Fire!" He gasped to himself.

He looked down at his hands and without putting a single additional thought into it he took action. His fingers erupted in the blue glow of mana and he wrapped them around Alexis' ruined calves. Careful not to actually touch her wounds, he placed his thumbs and fingers at the edges of her wounds as evenly as he could. It took all of his concentration and willpower, but he commanded the dancing mana to glide over and cover every millimeter of the deep cut on and once he achieved full saturation, he ignited it with a thought.

Even unconscious she gasped as he seared her flesh closed, he merely gritted his teeth and did his best to muffle his own scream as his fingertips suffered the same fate as her muscles and tendons. The smell of burning human was not a pleasant one but he was too single-mindedly focused on his mana to care.

When the wound was fully burned to what would be considered a third degree he reached for the closest vial of red potion and, realizing he really ought to have opened them before ruining his fingers, bit the cork off and poured a small amount into his free palm before dipping the fingers of his other into the pooling red liquid. He repeated the process with his other hand before finally pouring the liquid on Alexis' cauterized wound.

Akara's first rule of providing medical aid was to make sure you yourself are safe and in good condition before tending to others. It reminded him of airplane emergency procedures.

With that done Izuku uncorked the other two vials, even though the first was still two thirds full. He just wanted to be prepared before he ruined his fingers again. By the time he finished properly setting up his work area this time, the calf wound was completely shut, but the scar left behind was deep and ugly. He hoped she would forgive him in time.

He mentally registered the approach of something big, glowing and red from the opposite end of the graveyard to Isendra's World War One re-enactment. He also registered Maria calling out for help dealing with it and her sisters coming around to encircle him from behind.

Izuku dared to turn around and look past the circle of archers to see what was approaching from the north.

Skeletons. A horde of skeletons, each armed to the teeth and led by a glowing crimson pile of bones with a mace larger than Izuku.

They were all fast moving, at least in comparison to the zombies, but his half-circle of archers remedied that with a barrage of what could only be described as ice arrows. Each impacted center mass in their sternums.

They didn't seem to hurt the piles of calcium walking towards them, what with them having no flesh to pierce. It did, however, slow them down. A thick covering of ice sprouted from where the arrows struck, freezing their joints shut and stopping them in their tracks. The small army still advanced, fighting against the cracking ice covering them as they moved.

Leaving the fighting to the adults as they turned the battlefield into a casual shooting range he turned back to Alexis and got back to work.

This time he turned his head to bite down on the collar of his leather shirt as he burned his fingertips and cauterized Alexis' wound. He repeated his earlier action of pouring the red potion into a pool in his palm to soak his fingers in before applying it to Alexis' calf. And so he worked, painfully, meticulously. His work an all-consuming inferno in his mind as his fingers went completely numb from the repeated burning and healing.

He fixed up both thigh muscles as the screaming of the rogue sisters, moaning of shambling undead, and screeching of flaming arrows filled his ears. The exhaustion, mental and physical, of using so much magic so deliberately was wearing him down. Supposing he was running out of mana he reached for the blue vial and dared to risk a sip despite his last experience with the stuff.

As soon as the blue, minty liquid touched his tongue relief and strength returned to him, along with the now familiar burning sensation of mana coursing through his body, though now it was less painful and more soothing.

With that done the healing he could do for Alexis was finished and he poured some of both potions down her throat. His hope was that with her legs healed she could escape the graveyard by her own power and heal the wounds of her upper body later. Preferably with access to a disinfectant that didn't require him to melt off his fingernails.

For a split second he worried that taking the blue and red potions back-to-back could have unintended side effects, but that worry vanished as the wounds on her face and upper body began to bleed. This would normally be a bad thing, but they weren't bleeding because they had been reopened. They were bleeding because she had more blood in her body now. The correct amount of blood.

When her eyes snapped open Izuku wasted no time.

"Alexis! We have to move now. I have healed your legs and I need you to use them." He instructed.

She was visibly delirious and clearly hadn't understood a word he had said. He knew his efforts had been wasted and there was no chance of her getting out of there by her own power.

He felt the excess mana caused by the potion swelling up painfully within him and knew he was close to suffering the same "mana attack" he had when he'd drunken it in that cave with Isendra, so he resolved to spend it as quickly as possible. He turned around to see the horde of skeletons were mere meters away, nearly upon the rogue sisters protecting him. The effects of the ice arrows had diminished in the moments since they were struck, but the white sheet of ice still covered every bone. That suited his plans perfectly.

He sprinted forward to join their semicircle and let go. He let all of his mana flow forward out of his body, and it seeped into every stone, nook, cranny and abdominal cavity in the ten meters in front of him. From there, he simply flipped a switch in his mind, as if striking a match, and all was fire.

Pop physics quiz. What do you get when you supercool hundred-year-old bones then rapidly heat them?

The entire lower halves of every single skeleton shattered. From the Tibia to the femur to the pelvis, and when the upper bodies fell to the ground they too were consumed by the unrelenting flames. All save the crimson glowing one who, though bereft of legs, crawled forward with hands and elbows. When he was all but a meter away and ready to bear down on him all five of his lady companions stepped forward and kneeled down to hold their notched arrows inches from his face.

All at once they let loose and Izuku heard the shattering of bone indicating his skull was no more. He couldn't actually see it, what with five full-grown women occupying one square meter of space between him and the now headless enemy. But his imagination filled in the blanks.

Not even a second passed by before he felt the full-body exhaustion of his entire mana store being depleted all at once and felt himself falling. When his entire vision filled with white light, he feared that his life had come to an end and squeezed his eyes shut. When the sound of crackling lightning filled his ears along with it, he realized he was still alive. Oddly, the pain of electrocution failed to materialize, so he dared to open his eyes.

Beautiful, arcing lightning flowed across the entire graveyard, outright vaporizing every single remaining zombie but failing to so much as singe a single plant, tombstone or person. The arcing lightning, pure white instead of the white and blue Isendra could cast, filled him with a sense of relief, like the moment before sleep took you after a day of hard work.

"Ooooooohhh." Blood Raven's soft, beautiful voice filled his ears yet again, filled with that same relief he felt.

Her thankful moan was followed by one last gasp of air and the lightning subsided, leaving them in a silent graveyard with the smoldering remains of the undead army.

The all stood there as even the insects and wind went silent. And then, all at once, they cheered, whooped and wept in joy at the end of the battle and disbelief at all of their survival. Izuku did all three and did so
louder than anybody else.

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by Magikuser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.

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[Poparakelis0.2]

You need more tags, people don't know what to expect with just MHA

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 9:​

Bridging the Gaps​

---

Izuku rested against the tree beside the newly bandaged and cleaned Alexis while her sisters scoured the battlefield under the moonlight.

He was exhausted, but unharmed. In fact, by some miracle, not a single person was injured during the great battle. The entire thing was an overwhelming victory, and he did his best not to let it lift his mood too much. It was still a somber occasion, for these ladies to have to dredge through the remains of their predecessors and their ravaged holy place.

"Disinfectant." Isendra said as she returned from her scouting of the perimeter. "What a stupid oversight on my part. I am so sorry Izuku."

"Oh, um... Think nothing of it? I made do." He said.

"Yes. Made do." She said suspiciously. "Let me see your hands again."

It wasn't a request, it was an order, and he had signed a contract to obey those from her. So, he stretched his arms and fingers out for her to examine under the torchlight. All of his fingers, to the first knuckle, were nothing more than scar tissue. Even his nails had fallen off from his experiment in creating a cauterization spell.

"Burn wounds leave nastier scars than cuts or stab wounds." Isendra explained. "To repeatedly sear your own flesh and heal it over and over again? It will be a miracle if you ever regain sensitivity in your fingertips. If you had any ambitions of playing the guitar or sewing, you can throw those dreams away. I suspect your fingernails will grow back though."

Izuku accepted the small blessing for what it was. A consolation prize for his stupidity and thoughtlessness.

"It was a good plan. You were following the spirit of my instructions and focused your efforts on saving them and getting them out if need be. You did excellently for your skill level." Isendra consoled him.

"But it was pointless." Izuku groused. "I gave myself, and more importantly gave Alexis, permanent and unnecessary scars."

"I don't mind." Alexis said sleepily, stirring from her rest on the ground. "Battle scars add charm and character to a lady of the Sightless Eye. And you did still save us with that wall of fire."

"Wall of fire?!" Isendra demanded.

"Oh, um. Yeah, I just flooded the entire graveyard in front of me with mana and lit it on fire." He explained. "It worked really well because the five sisters froze them all with those nifty ice arrows."

She stared at him.

"I am not surprised to hear that you had the power to do that after you nearly overdosed on mana potion again, but I am surprised you had the technical skill to accomplish such a feat. We will discuss this later. for now, I think the others are finished." Isendra told him.

Izuku turned to look and sure enough Maria, Flavie and the other four rogues had come back from yet another round of searching the dead. Each carried armfuls of armor, daggers, swords and other armaments of the undead. Here and there were coin purses of any smaller trinkets they may have found. Which considering this was a burial ground, probably included a lot of heirlooms buried with the dead.

They carefully placed the latest items in a pile near the tree, with Flavie being more careful than the rest. She carefully placed a folded chain mail shirt on the ground and then place a bow next to it. After that was what he now recognized as a wand and a large, tattered book.

"We can't figure out who is even who of the undead." Flavie explained. "Without access to the monastery and the burial records we can't identify who is who based on their belonging. And their bodies were so damaged by the purge spell tied to Raven's death that we can't even rebury them, let alone in the correct graves."

She wiped a tear from her eye and sniffed a bit but kept her jaw firm.

"I think the best we can do for them is collect their ashes and dust into sacks and send them off down the river." Flavie said.

"I think that is a lovely idea." Maria said kindly as she came up behind Flavie and rubbed her back. "We will prepare the encampment for the funerary services when we get back."

"What of their belongings?" Asked another rogue, Lemmie, if Izuku remembered correctly.

"That is a much easier issue to resolve." Flavie said, turning to Izuku and Isendra. "That you two did the most to put them back to their eternal rest despite having the least at stake for doing so means I think you should have their offerings. That which was buried with them and rose with them. All of these valuables, tools, weapons and armor are yours to do with what you wish."

Isendra stood up in a gesture similar to that of standing at attention.

"Isendra, I suspect Blood Raven's chain mail may fit you with some modifications, and besides Akara I can think of nobody more able to make use of her grimoire." Flavie said as she picked up the two items in question and handed it to his master.

She took them with a slight bow.

"And Izuku, her bow is too large for you but I suspect you will grow into it in time. It was with this bow that she fought the forces of Diablo himself and helped to take him down." Flavie explained as she picked up said bow and approached him with it.

Izuku backed away at the gesture.

"I um. I don't know if I can accept that." He said.

Quick as a flash Isendra placed her newly acquired chain mail and grimoire on the ground and roughly grabbed Izuku by his shoulder to drag him away.

"Excuse us for a moment." She said to the sisters.

She pulled him away just out of earshot before looking him sternly in the eyes.

"You are insulting them, and you are embarrassing me." Isendra insisted, her teeth gritted in clear anger with him. "Take it. You will apologize and accept any gifts they have to give."

Izuku turned his eyes downwards in deference.

"Yes, mistress." He said, feeling awkward for using the word.

When she nodded in satisfaction and made no stink about the form of address they returned to the tree. Thinking fast he came up with an excuse.

"Apologies. I meant to say, it might be better off in more skilled and deserving hands like yours, as I didn't help battle Raven. But it is yours to decide, so I shall endeavor to earn it in time." Izuku explained with a bow.

Flavie made an 'oh' face of realization at his thinking. she gave Isendra a slightly condescending look as if to imply she had overreacted to his perceived slight. All in all, his bullshit went right under her radar.

"You think too strategically at times, young Midoriya. You are such a man." Flavie chastised. "Sometimes you need to think more emotionally, as tradition and etiquette do not fall by the wayside in war. You have much training and growing to do before you can effectively use this bow, but I have seen your studiousness and hard work in all other things. I know you will train hard with it."

She handed him the bow again and this time he took it. After praise like that, how could he not?

"The rest you may sort through at your leisure seeing as you are to remain here. Are you two okay on your own while the rest of us return to the encampment?" Flavie asked.

"He and I are still fresh, and we were sent to relieve you anyways. All of you need to get back and rest properly. The burial ground must be protected, and I have duties as a teacher that I have obviously neglected. Duties that I prefer to do in private."

They all accepted this and readied to leave. It didn't take the seven of them much time as they were already packed and ready to go.

Together they all walked to the edge of the burial ground and the copse of oaks where the watch usually camped. The seven rogues watched patiently as Izuku and Isendra set up their camp. When that was done, they began their long trek home.

"Bye Izuku." Alexis said with a meek wave as she limped by.

He waved back but stopped when he noticed Isendra looking at the still injured rogue with a look of angry suspicion.

They watched and waited for the group of rogues to vanish into the night before they began to talk.

"We have at least a week until we are relieved, and I intend to spend that week correcting the holes in your training that reared up." Isendra said. "Over the next week I will be teaching you the basic firebolt spell and try to worm out of you the cultural differences that you keep stumbling over. I expect this to be difficult as I have no way of knowing what is different about your society in comparison to mine, unless you can point out things in our society that are utterly unacceptable in yours? But the problem there is that we have no way of knowing if your society has tendencies that are utterly unacceptable here until you stumble across them."

Izuku nodded to her words. It was all a very reasonable process.

"Should we start by my pointing out what is unacceptable to mine that I've noticed?" Izuku offered.

"That seems most logical. Seeing as you are too worn out to practice magic from the battle or even to do your pack mule duties at the moment." Isendra invited.

Izuku nodded.

"I don't have trouble with the things that aren't currently acceptable but used to be in my world, like slavery and indentured servitude. Those I was unsurprised by." Izuku began.

"Slavery and indentured servitude are nonexistent in your world?" Isendra asked, curious.

"Well. It exists but it's very illegal almost everywhere. It is one of the worst evils to us. No, all work is reimbursed financially with a proper wage. No matter what." Izuku explained.

"Even apprenticeships?" Isendra asked. "Journeyman tradesmen are paid in full?"

"Better than most people, actually, yeah." Izuku said. "But most learning is done through schools instead of apprenticeships. Some schools the student pays for or takes out debt for, others are subsidized by benefactors, like companies that employed skilled workers. Izuku explained.

Isendra pulled out her own journal and began writing down what he had just said.

"What do you have trouble with then?" Isendra probed.

"It was the things that were unacceptable even when my world had a similar society to yours that still trip me up. Stealing from the dead has never been acceptable. Even in hard times." Izuku explained.

"Then perchance you should list off the things your world finds most reprehensible and I can explain how they are dealt with here?" Isendra suggested.

"Cannibalism?" Izuku asked.

"Death penalty." Isendra said simply.

"Gayness?" He asked.

"There is not much to be gay about in these dark times, but is it such a terrible thing in your world?" Isendra asked.

Izuku was reminded that words and their meanings changed over time, and she didn't know what he meant by gay.

"Homophilia?" He clarified.

"Some societies still prey on boys your age as catamites, yes, but you need not worry about such a fate befalling you." Isendra consoled. "You need not be violated by older men to learn in my order."

Ah. They carried on a Greek tradition here then.

"Rape?" Izuku asked.

"Very illegal." Isendra informed him. "Usually, the two participants will be forced into marriage, especially if they conceive, or the cad will be forced to pay reparations for seducing the maiden. Rarely is a man executed for being a rake, but it does happen. Especially should he be the paramour of a married woman."

Izuku didn't understand how any of what she just said applied to rape, until he remembered that words change meaning over time.

That's right, rape used to just mean 'premarital sex'. Every now and then a story out of India or the middle east would reach Japan about a poor young girl being forced to marry her rapist. Usually leading to some superficial outrage. When the reality turned out to be that a young man was forced to marry the village mattress he had slept with or else be executed, such outrage vanished. Such men usually opted for a horrible marriage over death by mob.

He didn't know rape also used to be applied to adultery. Sure, they learned during their study of the western Scarlet Letter that the paramours of adulteresses were regularly executed while said adulteresses were just publicly shamed, but it was never referred to as rape.

"I think your world is more similar to the history of mine than it is different." Izuku concluded. "I wish I could just assume the following were unacceptable, but I have to ask. Bestiality, pedophilia, necrophilia?"

"Each warrants a long and painful execution." Isendra summarized. "Though surely taking from the dead isn't as abhorrent to your people as those things?"

Izuku conceded her point with a shrug.

"We shall figure this all out in time, my apprentice." Isendra consoled. "I believe the best policy is for you to simply watch and observe how people here behave and remain silent. Do as I do or say, and you shall be fine. For now, get some sleep. I will keep first watch."

---

The next morning saw Izuku cleaning up the burial grounds with a broom and dustpan. Flavie hadn't been kidding when she said the army of undead had all been reduced to ash and dust. She left out the bone meal part.

He felt the epitome of sacrilegious for treating the dead like mere dirt to be placed into rubbish bags, but dump them into burlap sacks he did and as the hours waned on the bags became fuller and more numerous. All the while he made a point to keep Isendra's sleeping form in clear view, occasionally doing a lap around the grounds to see any approaching threats on the horizon.

It was bizarre for the place to be so quiet and unmolested after such a fierce battle. It really was just the two of them there.

It was nearly noon when he decided to take a break. He retrieved some bread, cured meat and cheese from their rations and approached Isendra's sleeping form, gently prodding her awake.

"Hm?" She said as she stirred in a panic, before calming down at the sight of him. "Oh. Is it time for me to start the day Izuku?"

"Yes, Mistress." He said, handing her half of the days rations.

"Thank you." She said, sitting up in her sleeping bag and crawling out of it.

They had dug up a patch of dirt under the tree for her to sleep under, that way she could sleep shaded from the sun. The added bonus of being in his eyeshot at all times while not being on top of somebody's grave were added bonuses.

"Tell me of this firewall you performed last night?" Isendra invited as she ate.

Izuku paused in his eating to answer.

"Well, I took some of the mana potion when I was starting to feel exhausted. But felt the potions effects overwhelming him and sought to release it all at once." He explained. "What I did was force all of my mana out at once along the ground and then, you know, ignited it."

Isendra nodded with his words.

"It sounds like your hyper-sensitivity to mana potions is more severe than we thought." She said, "We need to figure out how little you can safely consume, and we will do so during your training starting today."

"Is this an advantage?" Izuku asked. "Being sensitive to mana potions like that?"

"Financially? Yes. You can buy one mana potion, split it into eight or more vials and water them down. You will save a fortune. But I know that's not where your mind has wandered to." Isendra warned. "You are not the first person to be hyper-sensitive to mana potions, nor are you the first to imagine overcharging your mana in order to perform spells far beyond your ability is a good idea. Learn from the mistakes of the people who tried; it isn't. If you repeatedly do so it can and will kill you, or worse, permanently disable you and your magic so that the pain of mana surge will be permanent."

Ouch. Yeah, he didn't want that.

"But then why am I not experiencing any pain from it now? I feel fine. Better than usual actually." Izuku told her.

"That's because you are an eleven-year-old child. As such you can bounce back from anything. I could hurl you off a cliff and you would walk it off. Take my word for it, the day will come when you wake up with inexplicable body pains, where your ankle or back hurt for no reason. And that will be the day you realize you have reached adulthood." Isendra explained.

Izuku smiled politely at the obvious joke, even if he didn't quite get it.

It made sense though. Him recovering from overusing a substance better than an adult seemed obvious, actually. Children had higher metabolisms, thus they healed faster, and had more flexible bones. Not to mention less developed nerves thus felt less pain, or so his dentist had explained to his mother at her concerns over the lack of anesthesia during his last cavity filling. That didn't mean he experienced less damage from overusing mana potions, just that he felt it less acutely and recovered from it more quickly.

"Are you ready to learn the firebolt spell?" Isendra asked as she finished off her breakfast.

Boy was he!

"You will need gloves." Isendra said.

Fortunately, there were several pairs in the pile of dead people's things just a meter away. He went over to the slightly organized pile and grabbed a pair of leather gloves.

"Put on two pairs." She instructed.

He put a second pair on over the first.

"And a helmet." She added.

He grabbed a metal helmet.

"Now, as you did with the wall of fire last night, extend the mana out of your body into a separate mass." She told him. "In the form of a sphere between your hands."

Izuku did so, and it came to him easily. It barely took him a minute before he succeeded. The ball of dim, blue light between his hands was barely visible in the bright sunlight, but it was there.

"Now light it on fire." She told him.

That part took less than a thought, and suddenly a ball of flame was hovering in the air between his hands.

"I did it!" Izuku yelled excitedly.

Isendra crushed that excitement along with his flame by reaching out with one hand and closing it into a fist, snuffing out the fire.

"You created a ball of fire. With that the most you could do is a weak flamethrower spell, useless against most enemies as pain will not slow down an undead nor a fallen." She said, "The firebolt is much more than that. It is concentrated, and it explodes with great heat and force upon impact with whatever you throw it at."

"Oh!" Izuku said. "So, I need to add a lot more mana, condense it and only ignite the outside of it? That way when it impacts all of the mana crushed inside will explode out at once?"

Isendra stared at him slack jawed.

"Yes. That is exactly right." She said suspiciously. "I'm starting to understand why my teachers hated me for being so much quicker to learn than them."

This was turning into his time with Akara all over again.

"Shall I try it?" Izuku asked.

"Now is as good a time as ever." She said, backing away from him.

He repeated the process again from earlier, this time pumping all of the mana he could through his arms into a point in the air between his hands. The ball of light he created this time was much brighter than before, like a star brought down to earth. Then, he ignited it.

---

When Izuku regained consciousness it was brought about by water being poured onto his face.

"Owe! What happened?" He asked Isendra.

"Same thing that happens to every sorcerer trying to cast the firebolt for the first time." She said. "It blew up in your face. No burns or lasting damage, just some soot. And I expect you will develop some bruises from that impressive explosion you caused."

So that's why she had backed away.

"For most people they don't actually send themselves flying two whole meters, but I think we have already established not to expect anything normal from you." Isendra said dryly. "Are you feeling any mana fatigue from that?"

Izuku stood up shakily, paying attention to his body as he did so. The same sensation of heavy exhaustion in his body that he had felt while cauterizing Alexis' wounds had returned during his nap.

He nodded.

"Drink a mouthful of this." She instructed, handing him a potion bottle.

It was too clear and light of a blue to be a regular mana potion, so he assumed she had just watered one down to be safe for him to drink. When he drank the mouthful as instructed he confirmed the same minty taste of a mana potion but milder.

"Wait a few moments, and when you stop feeling the increase in your mana drink another mouthful." She told him.

He did as she said, and they wound up repeating the process two more times before he felt like his mana was where it was when he woke up. She took a note of this in her journal, probably calculating how much mana potion that equated to.

"Now, I need you to try the firebolt again, this time using far less mana." She told him. "It will explode in your face. As will the third one and the thirtieth one. When you're able to maintain a firebolt between your hands for an entire minute we will move onto hurling it. And then work on your casting speed. And only then will you focus on power."

Izuku nodded. It was a logical process of development in his mind. Master casting the spell first, then doing so quickly enough to be of use at all in a battle, then improve it.

And so, the days passed.

His mornings were spent cleaning up the piles of human remains and his afternoons were spent knocking himself flat on his butt over and over again while Isendra studied Blood Raven's journal and organized their misbegotten goods. Each day ended with him scrubbing his face clean of the thick layer of soot he had earned. Along with the satisfaction that he had increased the time he could hold the spell by another ten seconds.

By the third day he had completely cleaned up the dead bodies and moved onto weeding the graves. Isendra had given him an odd look for his extra self-imposed labor when she had woken up and seen the results. She made no comment to encourage or dissuade him, so he kept at it.

It was on the fifth day that Isendra finally gave him further instructions.

"Now throw it." She said.

He tried to, but when he moved his hands to push it away it simply exploded.

"With your mana, young one." She corrected with a chuckle.

Ah. That made more sense. Sadly, it was easier said than done. It was another three days of attempts before he managed to send the firebolt flying instead of exploding in his face. By then the graveyard was free of weeds and he had even started on cleaning the tombstones themselves, though he had no hope of straightening them without a few heavy lifters there to help.

"You need to be able to hurl it more than two meters. I have seen you fire a bow. I know you can aim." She scolded.

Oh right. He had neglected his bow and knife practice these last six days. He would remedy that tomorrow, for now he needed to master the firebolt. He was so close it was maddening.

"I'd say you've pretty much learned the spell. You just need more practice." Isendra told him, clearly seeing his frustration. "In this at least your sensitivity to mana potions is a boon. One bottle is enough to keep your mana stores full for days. You can squeeze in far more practice than most apprentices. Believe me, you are making extraordinarily good time."

Izuku recognized her words as an invitation to take a break. He relented, putting his arms down and taking a deep breath.

"Come, sit with me. Let me show you what I have been learning." She ushered him towards her.

He came to her and sat on the ground just behind her.

"Moreina, in life, had picked up a few very useful spells. Including powerful healing spells, which I am not attuned to nor is my equipment. But more interesting is this." She said, opening to a page he couldn't make heads or tails of. "You cannot read runes, but this page and its diagrams depict a warp spell. A useful one that I have been learning while you practiced the firebolt."

---

Gheed was spending his evening doing what he did most evenings. Sitting on the edge of his cart smoking his pipe to wind down from the day.

Trading between the different encampments was long, slow work and the wagon from the east encampment brought with it tobacco and tea leaves, which most people thought he was crazy for combining.

"Any good drink come in today?" Warriv asked as he approached.

"Sadly, no." Gheed said. "But the bread is oddly plentiful. Hopefully the hunting party brings back some good meat this time."

"Anything but blood hawk meat is all I pray for." Warriv sighed in wanting.

One second the two men were being jovial, the next they were cowering beneath his wagon as a great, white gate opened up right next to them.

Peeking out from their hiding place, bereft of weapons, they saw a small figure walk through it carrying a burlap sack nearly as large as he was.

"Oh hey Warriv. Gheed. What are you doing down there?" Izuku asked politely.

"Um. Hiding from potential hordes of fallen flooding through a portal that just opened up next to us?" Warriv offered.

"Huh. Well that isn't going to happen, only nice people can get through this gate." Izuku told them. "Well I need to get these bags of bonemeal, ash and dust to Kashya. If you could help me with that, Warriv. Then I need to come sell you a lot of neat stuff, Gheed."

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.

Prices:​

$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room for fanfiction.

$25 per 500 words for original fiction, or anything else that is not fanfiction, as well as for smut/fetish material.

Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[Jocksinnnnnn]

I bet the runes are gonna be Kanji, the question is if they are formal or informal

 

[zebrin]

I wonder if you are going to have Izuku meet any of the other player classes.
Izuku's reactions to a necromancer should be funny.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 10:

Positively Shocking​

---

"Aaaand I think that's the last of it." Izuku said as he placed the last of the misbegotten loot onto Gheed's cart.

The man now had a veritable armory of bows, daggers and passable leather armors. Gheed found the handful of wands particularly interesting, especially the twisted black one.

"Did Isendra mention what it was attuned to?" He asked, holding said black wand.

"Oh, um. Necromancy." Izuku said.

"And obviously so, but it always pays to make certain by the advice of an expert." He said in the air of a wise man imparting wisdom. "Is it your intention to outright sell all of this to me or do you have a shopping list to exchange for first before making up the difference?"

Izuku answered by pulling the literal shopping list from his breast pocket.

"She wants me to buy a metal helm, hard leather armor, hard leather gloves and a hard leather belt." Izuku listed off. "For me. Just a metal helm and hard leather belt and gloves for her."

"Most of that you should probably get new from Charsi." Gheed told him. "The smallest hard leather shirt she'll have will go down to your knees and look more like a tunic. And you'll have to cut a lot more notches into the belt. Pants will need modification too. You'll have to take all of it and the helm to Charsi for modification. You should probably focus on just buying supplies from me, kid."

"Oh! In that case all of the usual potions and supplies. Plus, I need some vodka and honey-soaked bandages. Resupply of our rations, extra burlap sacks. Like I said, the usual." Izuku listed off, thinking.

Gheed went around his wagon throwing all of the items Izuku mentioned into a sack while ticking off the items off his own list. Izuku suspected he was also keeping a tally of the cost exchange of the items he was selling with what Izuku just brought him. While he did that Izuku checked his coin purse to see if there was anything small he'd forgotten. Finding a couple gold rings and a chipped ruby he placed those on the cart as well, but stopped before dropping the ruby.

He could feel it. Magic inside of the stone. It was hot fiery, more so than magic naturally felt, like a little ember of the fire of life.

"And that should do it for you. Oh! Jewelry? For me?" Gheed interrupted Izuku's examination of the stone. "Let me do a little adjustment to my numbers then and I'll get you your gold."

Gheed snatched up the rings and ruby and disappeared into his tent where he no doubt kept a rather sturdy safe. He returned moments later with two sacks of coins and plopped them down.

Izuku picked them up and marveled at how light they were. They almost weighed nothing.

"I believe that brings you up to three thousand gold coins. Word to the wise, when every mission could be your last it is better to spend money on things that can save your life instead of hoarding gold." The self-interested gypsy said shamelessly.

Izuku ignored the latter part of what Gheed said and focused on the burning question at hand.

"Why do they weigh so little? This has got to be fifty kilos of gold here." he said.

"Secret enchantment of the money changers." Gheed told him. "From what little the rest of us can tell it only works on gold, copper and silver. Makes it weigh absolutely nothing. Also works on aluminum strangely enough, but only the really rich can get their hands on that stuff. We all wish they'd share the secret, that way enchanted jewelry could also be weightless. But since the weightless enchantments are unknown, there's no way to know how it'll interact with mana storage or poison protection enchantments or what have you."

That was a shame. And yet Izuku already had an theory how the enchantment worked anyways. All of those things he mentioned were strongly conductive and potentially magnetic. So was the planet. So maybe they enchanted coins to be repelled by the planet's magnetic field so perfectly as to weigh nothing at all? He'd have to remember to ask Isendra or Akara about that idea later.

"Could I get a journal off of you too?" Izuku asked. "I need to start writing more things down."

"Yes, Izuku. You do." Isendra said from behind him.

Izuku turned around to see the woman, now garbed in a skin tight chain mail beneath her usual clothing, walking towards him from the center of the encampment. It looked... good on her. Really good. Was chainmail supposed to be as attractive as the usual skin tight suits of heroes? because now he wanted a set.

"And a quarter of that is yours, for your help in the raid, work in the burial ground and trading with Gheed. Count it out later, for now I need you to follow me."

Izuku snatched up the bag of coins, and the brand new journal Gheed had somehow placed beside them in the few seconds he was looking away, and donned the sack of gear. He then hurried after Isendra's trail.

"Thanks to the portal we were relieved early." Isendra told him. "Kashya seems to think we earned it. She, Warriv and Akara request our presence at Akara's tent."

Izuku resisted the urge to correct her with a glib "Don't you mean Akara's NEW tent?" as he was certain it would earn him a glare at best, or a well-deserved smack at worst.

It was a short walk to Akara's new, larger tent and they entered the abode to greet the circle of wise leaders. All three of them were there, seated on cushions at the center of the room and obscured incense-smoke. There was somebody else there too, a woman, wrapped in bloodied bandages and laying down on a bed behind the three.

"Welcome Isendra, Izuku. Please. Come in." Akara instructed, motioning to the free cushions.

They did so, with Izuku waiting for his mistress to sit first before doing hte same.

"You have both earned my respect." Kashya started the meeting out. "Blood Raven was once my closest friend. Thanks to you not only was she and the rest of our sisters of the past returned to their eternal rest, but you saved the lives of six of my bravest. Possibly seven. As such all of them are now at your service whenever they can be spared."

Isendra bowed graciously and Izuku followed her example.

"You will need it for the mission we have for you now." Warriv added, cutting straight to the point. "Deckard Cain is alive, and you are to rescue him and bring him here."

"Impossible!" Isendra gasped. "Tristram fell months ago, how could he have survived there this entire time?"

Izuku was hearing a lot of new words today, so he opened his journal and began writing them down.

"I came across several survivors of the raid on Tristram after Diablo's defeat." Warriv said. "Each was certain that Cain had been captured alive and imprisoned. I determined then that he was surely dead, but it is clear now that I was mistaken."

"Indeed." Said Kashya. "I sent a scouting party out to perform reconnaissance on the destroyed city, and they witnessed Cain imprisoned, raised up in a cage to be given a full view of the devastation of his homeland. We need him."

Isendra nodded, a look of deep consternation on her face.

"We are dealing with forces we do not understand, and we cannot afford to blunder along any further." Akara jumped in. "Of the Horadrim left alive, none are more studied or wise than Deckard Cain. And above swordsmen, sorcerer's and archers, what we need is information and the wisdom to guide it. We. Need. Deckard Cain. With his brilliant mind as our sword we can slice through the fiendish forces assailing us."

Warriv scoffed.

"What little of it remains." The caravan leader said dismissively. "From what the survivors told me he had already been driven half mad even then, when he was first captured. I shudder to think about the state of his psyche after several months in the care of fallen shamans."

Izuku had seen healing magic and potions used so vociferously as to be ubiquitous. Was there no healing magic for the damaged mind? He wrote that question down in his new journal. Followed by whether or not gems could be filled with magic and his idea on the weightlessness enchantment.

"Even madness-addled, his brain would be an invaluable asset." Isendra countered, hand on her chin in thought. "But it would take us nearly a month to reach Tristram by foot, and by then he surely would be lost."

"That is why you will not be going by foot." Kashya told them.

"But how would we get there?" Isendra asked.

"Through the Cairn stones." Akara told them, and Izuku wrote that down as well. "There is a magical portal there that will take you directly to Tristram, but the way to access it has been lost for some time."

Which is why I sent another team to recover said way." Kashya took over. "The tree of Inifuss to the north, a repository for arcane knowledge by wielders of magic long lost. The last survivor of the team I sent returned yesterday, her sisters all fallen to the protections it held."

She turned around to the prone figure on the bed, whose breathing was inconsistent and strained even though she was clearly asleep.

"Freya may yet die from her wounds, but her bravery bore fruit." Kashya told them, lifting a scroll made of tree bark for them all to see. "This contains the knowledge you will need, but it is gibberish to all but our brilliant Akara."

Akara bowed her head at the compliment just as Isendra had before.

"It will take me all evening to finish the translations, as such you two will leave first thing in the morning." Akra told them. "I am certain that you have the skill to open the portal with this information, Isendra. And should you lack the power, I am equally certain that young Midoriya can make up the difference."

Izuku blushed at the praise and implied sourness. Yeah, she was definitely still upset about the whole blowing up her tent thing.

"This timing is especially fortuitous." Kashya told them. "As we all wish to be alone for the sending off of our lost sisters down the river. Make your preparations and rest well until then. You may take any of the seven from your mission to the burial grounds, save for Alexis who I have put on leave to recover from her ordeal there."

Warriv scoffed again.

"Ironic, considering she was the most outspoken about wanting to join the two of them." He said teasingly.

Kashya glared at him but did not comment.

"I understand you now know the Town Portal spell?" Akara said. "Seeing as that is the case I would like you to have the handful of town portal scrolls I have made. In case Izuku or Cain must escape without you. Now, go prepare for your trip and rest well. In the morning we will have our river funeral the moment you leave."

"I am also preparing my caravan to give you some privacy for the day." Warriv said sympathetically. "So, we shall accompany you two for a leg of your journey before turning back around. A good hike will do all of us some good, I think."

Isendra bowed graciously once again and stood up to leave. Izuku imitated her actions and followed her out through the front flap.

"We must hurry. Charsi will have her work cut out for her preparing your new armor by morning, and we will have to pay her extra for the effort." Isendra told him. "Get good sleep, for tomorrow we have a long hike and longer battle."

---

The next morning saw the duo setting out from the rogue encampment and a piece of magical bark capable of acting as a key to a portal powered by standing stones. He had been prepared mentally for a strange life as a hero, but the life he was living was stranger by far.

His new armor fit snugly, especially his helmet which he suspected Charsi had taken extra care in fashioning for him. That or his work in helping her for the past few months made her more familiar with his dimensions than Isendra's.

The army of merchants and dispossessed refugees following in their wake was the most normal thing about the situation.

"In a just world we would all be partying in celebration right now." Gheed lamented. "Our victorious heroes return from a battle they won by an overwhelming margin, and we send them right back out with solemn proceedings in place of exultations."

"Please do not fill my apprentice's head with unrealistic expectations." Isendra scolded the man before looking pointedly in Izuku's eyes. "Casualty-free victories like what we had at the burial grounds are a rarity. Dare I say, miracle. A blessing we should be eternally grateful for. But as you no doubt realized from the fate of the team sent to retrieve the bark of Inifuss, you should not expect such victories in the future. Or dare to hope for them."

As a matter of fact, that exact epiphany had plagued Izuku the night before after seeing the bandaged Freya in Akara's tent. He still intended to dare to hope, but he would keep such willful naivety to himself.

"Bastion of optimism and positive reinforcement, that one." Warriv remarked snidely.

Isendra turned her frigid glare on Warriv.

"Unironically? I am significantly more optimistic than I let on. But I have duties as his mistress to temper it." She said before motioning for Izuku to follow her.

She led him to the side of the caravan and out of earshot but doing so in a way as to remain parallel to them so as to remain on track.

"Just because we have company does not mean we can neglect your training. Now, I have seen you writing diligently into your notebook. Am I right to assume you have been saving your incessant questions for more appropriate situations in which to ask them?" She asked, and when Izuku nodded she went on. "Well now is that situation. Ask away."

Izuku withdrew his journal and started at the top.

"Can gems be imbued with magic of a specific element?" He asked.

"Ah! felt the fire magic within the ruby you found, did you?" She asked rhetorically. "Yes indeed. They can serve as a great store of power. Metals are excellent for imbuing with a spell to be powered by a user, and sometimes are sufficient to power them, and gems can often be filled with enough of said power for those without sufficient magical power. Or those who run out of their own mana."

Izuku wrote that down.

"I thought scrolls were the things imbued with spells?" Izuku asked.

"They can be, but with special ink made from the dust of gems. Where they get the dust from, I do not know." Isendra answered.

"Probably shavings from the process of cutting gems into shape." Izuku said offhandedly as he wrote these words down too.

Isendra sighed but nodded in agreement.

"Is there healing magic and potions for repairing damaged minds as with damaged bodies?" He asked.

"Ouch." Isendra said with a hiss. "That is a touchy subject. Mind magics are more verboten than even necromancy, which is somewhat tolerable because most mage's of healing are technically also a necromancers. The need to understand the body and its processes necessitates the study thereof. The evil one can do with mind magics is orders of magnitude greater than nearly any other. I leave it to your imagination how that is so. As with healing magic in order to become skilled enough to heal a mind or soul with magic necessitates and implies the ability and practice of harming the mind with magic. The mere rumor that you have such abilities will lead to shunning at best, constant attempts on your life at worst."

Izuku wrote that down in big, bold letters. Poor Cain. Anybody actually capable of helping him would die before actually helping him.

"Now. It is time for you to branch out into other magics besides fire spells." Isendra told him. "Now get out your waterskin."

Izuku put his journal away and did as she instructed.

"Now, with fire under your belt, ice magic should come easy." She began.

"Makes sense. Cold is just the absence of heat. So what, you want me to remove the heat from my waterskin to freeze it?" Izuku asked.

Isendra sighed again, this time massaging the bridge of her nose.

"I am being punished." She bemoaned, staring up to the sky. "The gods are punishing me for being such a nightmare to my own masters by saddling me with a prodigy of my own. If they were here now."

She turned a hateful glare down to him as they continued to walk.

"I do so hope this suffering is paid forward to you when you someday suffer an apprentice of your own. Fate willing, I will be there to watch and laugh at your misery." She laid a curse on him with a hint of smirk.

Izuku blushed at the venomous compliment to his intelligence he recognized her words as.

"Sooo..." Izuku pressed.

"Freeze the waterskin by drawing the heat away from it with your mana. It helps to first fill it with raw mana that you have not imbued with an element." She clarified.

Izuku did that. Or at least tried. Despite her insistence that it should be easy for him it did not come as easily as the firebolt spell, which he supposed was a good thing based on how much more dangerous an out-of-control ice spell might be. The firebolt he had held in the air away from him, the waterskin was in his hands. If he overdid it, he would probably wind up freezing his hands solid and wind up losing a few fingers to frostbite.

He'd already done enough damage to his fingers, thank you very much.

He spent the remainder of his morning trying to freeze said waterskin, but only managed to cool it. It made for a nice, cold drink when they finally took a break. He was partly pleased to discover the small shards of ice that came with the first gulp. Or at least after his panic from nearly swallowing them, he was.

"Alright, we're going to head on back." Warriv told them. "By the time we return Kashya should be finished with their funeral. You three sure you'll be fine by yourselves? We didn't encounter any trouble on our trip so far, but that's mostly because the small packs of fallen or foul creatures won't attack large groups."

Yeah, strength in numbers is a good shield to have, and he was sad to be losing it. But he was concerned by Warriv's sudden inability to count.

"Three of us?" Izuku asked.

"Isendra, you and myself." Flavie answered.

Izuku had somehow missed the strangeness of her presence until that very moment.

"Wait, you would miss out on the funeral to be with us?" Izuku asked.

"I sent off Raven when I dealt her the finishing blow in the burial ground. I am content." Flavie said solemnly. "But I am the strongest of my sisters that Kashya has put at your aid, and so I thought it best that I join you in this mission. It is important enough for me to sacrifice the chance to comfort my loved ones in their sorrow."

Izuku felt touched by her words, but suspected they meant more than he could guess.

The rest of the caravan turned around and proceeded back down the path from whence they came, leaving Izuku with Isendra and Flavie to continue their journey, which they did post haste.

The last leg of their journey was short, the fields of standing stones coming upon them before he could make any further progress on his water freezing practice.

"Fallen." Flavie said in a whisper before crouching down.

Izuku and Isendra followed suit, skulking towards the stones as quickly as their crouched stances would allow. Izuku couldn't spot any sign of the fallen, not even a speck of red, but he didn't dare doubt Flavie's vision or judgment. He respected her too much.

When he finally spotted them he realized his mistake was assuming all fallen were red. These ones were turquoise blue and were camped out right in the middle of the circle of stones that served as their obvious target. Or at least, Izuku assumed these were the Cairn stones in question based on all the runes carved into them.

"That middle one could be a problem." Isendra said, pointing to the fallen in question.

Izuku followed her finger to spot a shaman, just like the ones they had faced in the cave. Squinting he could see the problem, as vicious sparks of electricity jetted between his horns as if they were Tesla coils. They definitely didn't want to get into close quarters combat with a demon of lightning.

"Overwhelming force from afar?" Flavie suggested, notching an arrow.

Isendra nodded.

"Izuku, it is time for you to put that firebolt of yours to good use. With the three of us focusing all fire on the shaman from afar we can hopefully take it down from afar. Then, its friends will be easy pickings." She instructed before correcting herself. "Well, easier pickings."

Izuku nodded, bringing his hands together to begin casting the spell in question.

It still took him half a minute to cast the damn thing, but he had gotten better at putting more into it. Without tooting his own horn, he suspected he could match Isendra's power with the spell. If he ever got to the point of being able to cast them like a machine gun, as Isendra could, he'd be a force to be reckoned with.

"You give the mark, Izuku." Isendra. "And that mark will be landing a firebolt on his big, ugly head."

Izuku nodded but put the rest of his focus into controlling his breathing and molding the spell. He put as much mana into it as he dared to risk, seeing as now would be the worst time possible to have one blow up in his face. When it reached its full power, he stood up from behind the boulder they were crouched behind and took aim at the unsuspecting demon.

His firebolt flew true and exploded on the creature's forehead in a burst of flame and smoke to outstrip all other bursts of flame and smoke he'd managed to create thus far. For a split second he stared in awe at the storm of fire and lightning that erupted around the creature, the bolts of which filled the entire area of the cairn stones with far greater range than they had expected of the shaman. Remembering himself, he began another firebolt just as the creature flew out of the flames towards them screeching at the top of its lungs.

Isendra and Flavie pelted it with piercing projectiles of ice as it bore down towards them. With each strike the lightning erupting from its body increased in number and intensity, while it's charging speed slowed in equal measure. The pack of similarly blue fallen charging beside their leader, on the other hand, kept a steady pace and paid no heed to the lightning that seemed to pass right through them.

By the time he readied his second fireball, the normal fallen were nearly upon them but he remained focused on the task at hand. He took aim and fired his second bolt at the shaman's center mass, missing by a foot and glowing off his shoulder and half his chest in a glorious display of frozen flesh and bone. The rest of his body fell to the ground with a dying gurgle.

Isendra and Flavie changed targets to the other fallen. Isendra with her an icy gale which brought the two closest to them down to snails pace, and Flavie with a fire arrow to the heart of the frozen one on the right. Before she could shoot another one on the left, Isendra erased it with a firebolt of her own.

The four remaining fallen then did something Izuku never expected one to do. They fled. They turned right around and ran away screaming.

He never would have expected them to be capable of self-preservation instincts, let alone acting on them. His estimation of their intelligence went up one entire point, bringing it up to exactly one. More surprisingly still, Isendra and Flavie let them, or more accurately, turned their attention to the seemingly dead shaman with their firebolt-fire arrow combo.

If it wasn't dead before, it sure was now.

"That was... anticlimactic." Izuku complained.

Flavie turned around and with an open hand smacked Izuku on the side of his head.

"Don't. Jinx our mission before it even really begins!" She snarled.

Izuku held a hand to where she'd hit him and blinked the surprise away.

"Oh. Right. Yeah, sorry." He said dazedly.

Isendra walked ahead to the Cairn stones, stepping over the dead fallen as she did so. Flavie did the same, but Izuku stayed behind. Feeling sufficiently humbled by the slap he remembered his job as a pack mule and searched the dead fallen for anything of value. A couple coin purses, and good quality leather belts and boots was all he found on the two normal fallen, but the shaman had two entire mana potions in addition to his coin purse.

It was when he picked up his staff that he realized he found something special.

"Whoa!" He gasped as he felt the magic within it.

The short staff reminded him almost of the ruby he had sold to Gheed the night before, but instead of feeling fire within it he felt fire within himself when he touched it. Like it was begging him to burn the world around him to ash. Looking closely, he saw there was a name written on it.

Bane Ash. Seemed fitting.

"What did you find there, Young Midoriya?" Isendra called.

He looked up to see her consulting the scroll Akara had translated in front of the nearest Cairn stone.

"Um. A staff. It feels like it wants me to use fire." He said, knowing the words sounded stupid.

"Then it is fire attuned. Seeing as all you can use is fire, it sounds like a good match. We will have to get it properly identified when we return." Isendra told him. "For now it should be a decent weapon for you, and a better walking stick."

It was exactly his height, yeah.

He walked to where Isendra was making shapes of blue mana on the stone with her finger, testing the stick's walking capabilities.

"Why did the lightning not hurt the other fallen?" He asked.

"Because they were his allies." Isendra answered without looking up from her task. "Magic is about intent, if you were to cast a firebolt at an enemy directly behind me with the intent to do me no harm, it would pass right through me."

Well that sounded like something she should have taught him before! It could come in handy.

"Is that why the lightning at the burial ground passed through all of us and only hurt the undead?" Izuku asked. "Was Blood Raven... helping us?"

"Indeed," Said Flavie. "In that last moment she was herself again, and it was beautiful. But don't go testing out your fireball on either of us until you have a bit more experience under your belt."

Izuku didn't need telling twice on that matter.

From there, he and Flavie watched silently as Isendra moved from stone to stone, drawing on them with her finger. She did this five times before achieving the result they had hoped for as a large portal like the one that had taken from the graveyard back to the encampment. Only this one was blood red. He didn't like that it was blood red, but he wouldn't complain.

"Steel your resolve. I suspect we will have a battle on our hands the moment we walk through." Isendra instructed him. "The moment you arrive, prepare a firebolt, and stay close."

Izuku nodded, and lined up behind the two women. Checking his surroundings to make sure none of the fleeing fallen were trying to sneak up behind them as he watched them filed through.

Taking a deep breath, he plunged into the portal.

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by Magikuser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.

Prices:

$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room for fanfiction.

$25 per 500 words for original fiction, or anything else that is not fanfiction, as well as for smut/fetish material.

Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[Magikuser]

I wonder if you are going to have Izuku meet any of the other player classes.
Izuku's reactions to a necromancer should be funny.

Click to shrink...

Oh I plan to have Izuku will meet the next group of foreign Nephalum soon with a variety of reactions.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 11:

Deckard Cain​

---

They arrive at Tristram beside a river to their left and pile after pile of rubble and ash on their right.

It was so overcast that the world appeared as night despite the orb of the sun being just noticeable in the sky overhead, but save for its halo in the clouds no light reached the earth. Despite that, he could see every shattered lamp post, crumbling foundations to homes and other structures and piles of ash to the horizon.

The crimson beacon of a portal they just walked through and could surely be seen for miles as it provided most of the light with which he could see, though he could recognize the glow of red and orange flames in the distance. Likely bonfires of those who had ravaged this land.

Any chance of this turning out to be a stealth mission was long gone thanks to said portal.

"They surely know we are here, prepare for immediate battle." Flavie ordered.

Izuku placed his hands together and began channeling mana in preparation of a firebolt as they advanced forward along the river. He had actually been tempted to start the spell before passing through the portal, but decided having it blow up upon his arrival would be a poor start to the battle ahead.

It was an entire ten seconds before they passed a house that belched forth a horde of skeletons. Each carried a saber and steel buckler. It wasn't even enough time for him to prepare a firebolt before the action started, just as they had predicted.

And so he watched helplessly as Flavie and Isendra took them down one-by one, both somehow knowing which target the other wanted to focus on and hurling their one two combo of ice and fire. Isendra threw ice bolts and firebolts while Flavie shot ice arrows and fire arrows. Alternating between elements so as to capitalize on the devastating effect of superheating frozen enemies.

By the time Izuku finished preparing his firebolt a lone zombie shambled into the fray and he let loose the orb of magic directly at its chest, erasing the undead from existence and thoroughly as if Isendra had cast it.

Refusing to let himself relax or take pride in the achievement, he began readying another firebolt as another, larger horde of buckler-brandishing skeletons and disoriented zombies closed in on them from all sides. This time a few of the turquoise fallen pushed through the throngs of undead too.

"Izuku! Prepare a fire wall!" Isendra ordered.

Oh were they considering it an actual spell now? Okay then. Izuku switched gears and reabsorbed the mana in his spell as Isendra let loose the largest blizzard from her hands he had seen her perform yet.

She and Flavie backed away towards him as the swarm of enemies closed in on them and Izuku moved forward. Placing both palms flat on the ground at the edge of the area of earth covered in frost. Pushing his mana outward he discovered he barely had to add any mana, as Isendra had already soaked the ten square meters with her own. He merely had to add enough to ignite it, which was still a significant amount for him, and the entirety of the enemy forces went up in flames.

Every bone on the skeletons shattered and the flesh of the feted flesh of the zombies melted before his eyes.

The three or so fallen closest to them, on the other hand, advanced onward towards them at a snail's pace as they fought against the layer of ice covering their bodies. Their speed increased as the flames lapped at them and removed said ice.

Insendra and Flavie took out the last couple of fallen as Izuku retreated to recover from the immense exertion. Reaching into the side pockets of his pack he retrieved a flask of his watered-down mana potion and downed a few gulps as he tried to catch his breath.

The fire died just as quickly as the trio of surviving fallen and Isendra gave herself a moment's respite to drink from her own bottle of mana potion before motioning to continue.

"We can search the bodies and abodes later, right now our sole focus is finding Cane." She instructed between heavy breaths. "Assuming he is alive."

"Help!" A man's voice hollered from beyond the burning building to their right.

The trio looked between each other. That sure had been fast.

They marched onward, past the flaming wreckage and into what must have been the town square. There, in the center, was a raised cage with a filth-covered man of significant age wearing nothing but tattered robes.

As soon as they entered the wide open area three entities to the north spotted them and began charging. At first Izuku mistook them for minotaurs, but as they drew nearer he realized they more resembled feral satyrs with wicked looking axes.

"Save Cane! Use your scroll to get him back to Tristram!" Isendra ordered.

Izuku nodded as the two women charged forward to meet the satyrs head on. He made a beeline straight to the pole holding up Deckard's cage

A single, hefty kick at the latched lever for the chain which held up his cage was enough to bring it crashing down, with Cain still in it. The old man grunted in pain at the sudden force of his stop but didn't seem harmed.

Izuku rushed to him, only to discover the cage had broken so thoroughly from the fall that he was simply able to walk out of it, though he did so weakly.

"Are you able to walk, mister Cain?" Izuku asked.

The old man waved off his concerns and held out a hand.

Now that he was up close Izuku couldn't help the horror at the physical state he was in. The man was skin and bones, pale beyond belief and the pinkish red color of healthy skin was absent. He also smelled of his own waste and months of unwashed sweat. The smell was overpowering.

"The scroll, quickly!" He demanded.

Izuku handed him the scroll and the man whipped it open like a roll of carpet. It obliterated itself in a flash of white light and a familiar blue portal appeared beside him.

"Thank you, young one. For coming to my aid. Return safely to wherever this portal takes me, with your companions in tow. We have much work to do." He said with a sad, weary expression.

He then limped through the portal and it faded behind him into nothing.

Izuku turned around to charge into the fray with Isendra and Flavie only to see that it was over and the two women were walking towards him.

"Mission accomplished, mistress." Izuku said with a full body sigh.

"No time to relax. We are not returning just yet." Isendra told him.

He straightened back up and re-tensed for more fighting.

"What are your orders?" He asked.

"Let us cleanse this place of evil. Let us tear down what little of the structures remain and put this city to rest once and for all." Isendra declared.

No sooner did the words escape her lips than did the sound of feet trampling earth echo from every corner of the ruined city. The screeching of fallen followed soon after.

Izuku placed his sack on the ground, unzipping the compartment of mana potions, and held his newly acquired staff with both hands. The desire to burn welled up in his being through his hands, up his arms and into his chest and he channeled as much mana as he dared into the staff.

He backed up towards where Isendra and Flavie stood back-to-back, and together the three covered every entrance to the town square as it filled with hordes of the blue, screeching demons.

They let loose everything they had. Or at least he did, paying no mind to the actions of his companions and trusting in them fully to cover him as he did for them.

Izuku flung a firebolt through the tip of his staff as easily as swinging it and it flew true to the shaman leading a horde from the south. It took his head off and continued through him into the chest of a fallen behind him, exploding with such force as to send the three around it diving to the ground.

The drain on his mana was instant, but not such that it tired him, so he followed it up with a one, two, swing that unleashed a pair of firebolts the the left and right most fallen charging forth. It achieved the crowd control he had been aiming for. Killing two fallen was a good start, sending eight backwards and to the ground was better, especially as it opened up the number of others behind them to a pair of firebolts all their own.

He was mowing them down like the trash they were and after the horrors he had personally witnessed the aftermath too it felt good to inflict a fraction of the pain they so enjoyed causing others back unto them.

By now he was beginning to feel the drain on his mana and the staff grew heavy in his arms. He took the small moment of respite as the fallen picked themselves off the ground to retrieve a mana potion from his sack and down as much as he could tolerate, before readying for another onslaught. The bastards mobilized quickly though, and the next fireball he flung exploded close enough for him to feel the heat and air pressure from the explosion. If they got any closer he would risk injuring himself and his ladies with the next firebolt.

"Prepare for nova!" Isendra called out from behind him.

Izuku recognized nova as that large wave of lightning she had used to clear out the cave what felt like forever ago.

"I'll follow it up with a fire wall!" He called back.

When neither voiced an objection he prepared the spell. As he had before, he placed the palms of both hands on the ground, setting the staff aside for now. He didn't have to wait long as a single, hair-raising wave of electricity passed through him harmlessly and towards the fallen not three meters away from him.

For the fallen, it was not so harmless. It stunned them in place like Parkinson's-inflicted marionettes. As did the second wave, and third which followed it. By now the electric current passing through them was visibly cooking their flesh from the inside.

Isendra must have run out of juice, pun intended, after the third nova spell so Izuku pushed every last ounce of his newly refilled mana pools into the fading spell and, like flicking a switch, ignited it.

Every inch of the town square was engulfed by his flames. As they rose Izuku focused his mind entirely on the idea of not harming Isendra and Flavie, hoping such intentions would be sufficient to spare them the searing heat and rising winds from his co-opted spell.

He couldn't see the effects of his efforts on the fallen, as the heat, wind and brightness of the flames forced him to clamp his eyes shut. But he did hear their screams for the short moment they lasted. He kept his concentration up even after he was sure they'd died out. Partly just to be safe, but mostly to retain control of the flames until they faded on their own. When they eventually did he felt himself collapse to the ground from the effort.

He was still fully conscious and felt no sign of it slipping, but every muscle felt tight and worn out.

That sure had been something.

He had the presence of mind to hear the releasing of a bow and several firebolts behind hin fired in his dazed state, but most of his focus was on the still open bottle of mana potion next to him. It took some teeth gritting but he managed to force his arms and hands to reach out and grasp the bottle. Bringing it shakily to his lips he drank as deeply as he could, draining it completely.

Silence reigned supreme in the burned ruins of Tristrams town square during the minute or so it took for the potion to work its magic. When he picked himself up from the ground it was to see Isendra and Flavie appraising him, and positively so by the looks on their faces.

"That is one hell of an apprentice you've gotten yourself, Isendra." Flavie said.

"Don't I know it." Isendra sighed with a bemused shake of her head.

Despite everything, he blushed at the praise. But the moment passed and he surveyed the damage.

Aside from the black, charred mounds of what had once been fallen, there was a large mass on the northside of the square. A single figure that had been caught in the lightning and flame but was not destroyed by it.

"What is that?" He asked.

"A very well made zombie." Isendra told him. "One made properly, and from a powerful man."

Right. The tenderizing that Raven had tried to do to Alexis, Mary and the others at the burial ground. On closer look it seemed to be a single man, a large one with no shortage of muscle or fat. To think he had survived all of that magic and needed a few arrows and additional firebolts to take down.

"Stay here, we will go search the dead and ruins this time." Flavie said. "You have earned a rest. Although we will leave the courtyard to you."

---

The trio returned triumphant through a manually cast portal by Isendra a few hours later as it was nearing night time.

They had opted to load the over fifty pairs of swords, bucklers and other weapons onto a barely functional cart they found in the ruins of Tristram instead of trying to bag and organize it all. The jewelry, potions, scrolls, gold and wands they found were threatening to burst from his overfilled pack. Isendra had packed any of the more interesting items into her own sack for later examination.

He was almost as amazed that he could fit the bag through the portal as with the cart, but both arrived at the encampment whole.

There, Kashya was waiting for them.

"Our hope for winning this war is now stronger than it has ever been." She said, "Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

"Is the old man okay?" Izuku asked.

She smiled kindly at him. A first.

"Akara is tending to him. Giving him a well-needed bath and proper meal as we speak." Kashya told him. "He will then be put to bed and treated." She informed them. "It will be a hard recovery, both from malnutrition and the adverse effects of cannibalism."

"Cannibalism?" Izuku asked.

Where had that come from?

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see his mistress looking at him sadly.

"What do you think they fed him to keep him alive there?" Isendra asked. "I'll tell you, it wasn't the long rotted cows we saw."

Izuku felt his stomach churn at yet another horrible revelation. All he could do was clench his teeth and fists, before excusing himself for an evening bath and bed.

---

A week later saw Izuku practicing his two mastered spells on a set of targets just outside of the encampment.

Each sported an assortment of holes where his spears of ice had embedded into them, but then again, so did the ground surrounding the targets. Several of said spears were still there.

Fire bolt. Ice bolt. Fire wall. His repertoire grew daily. He guessed flamethrower and drink chill could be added to the list if he was feeling generous to himself.

He took a break from wasting mana to sit on his rock and eat a bit of hard bread, looking over to the encampment to see if anything was amiss.

All seemed well. The freshly washed leather and padded armors from Tristram were hanging out to dry again beside the usual linen.

Ever since they'd returned with a mountain of gear, Charsi was hard at work repairing the many shields, swords and even a few sets of chain mail they had recovered. Meanwhile, Warriv's crew was working on the leather and padded armors. They were hard at work every morning cleaning and re-cleaning them to make them at all wearable, soaking them in perfumed charcoal and ash overnight to help the process of removing the stink further. They were close to ready for the basic tailoring to repair for rips and tears.

The only strange thing about the scene was Isendra, clad in the loose, white dress she always wore on washing days, approaching him.

Isendra comes to get him.

"Cain is awake and he wishes to see us." She informed him once he was within earshot.

He nodded, put his food things away, and joined her in the walk back to camp.

The mood had completely shifted since their return from Tristram. Their success in rescuing such a valuable sage, and the new armory they were in the process of building, felt like it changed the dynamics of the war completely.

Most difficult to adjust to was the change Izuku and Isendra's standing within said camp. Everyone smiled at them now. Everyone showed a similar respect to him as to Isendra. This came with the downside that they were less likely to ask him for help with the more menial tasks around camp, but he refused to stand aside and avoid pulling his own weight.

He did worry that people were getting annoyed with him badgering them for tasks to do, but there was never a shortage of such when he asked for them.

They arrived at Akara's tent to see her standing patiently outside for them.

"He is still weak, speak gently. And as respectfully as in the presence of god, young Midoriya." She said,

Addendum: Everyone aside from Akara treated him with respect. Geez, you burn a woman's home down and she never wants to let it go.

They entered the tent and Izuku couldn't stop the smile from erupting on his face at Cain's visibly improved health. He was still dangerously thin, sure, but pink had returned to his filth-free cheeks and his combed hair added some humanity back to his appearance.

"I wanted to personally thank you again for risking so much to save me." He began. "And even though your motivations weren't entirely selfless, the spirit of said motives were. As such my services are at your disposal should you ever need them. I have long made a living from charging for my ability to identify the magical properties of items without the need of an ancili, and now I shall do so for you at any time."

Isendra stood up even straighter at this pronouncement and Izuku knew this must be an even bigger boon than he could have guessed. He chose not to write that question down at the moment.

"I insist on you resting for one more day before doing anything that laborious." Akara interrupted. "Tomorrow you may begin providing them such services."

"Hmm. In the meantime I do hope somebody will begin filling me in on what I missed during my months of captivity." He said. "Or am I not strong enough for that, young lady?"

It took Izuku a moment to realize he was speaking to Akara due to the use of "young lady" for describing her, and he had to bite his lips to hide his amusement.

"I will tell you everything today, so long as you remain in bed." Akara said patiently. "After all, tomorrow we need you to begin helping us plan and coordinate."

The two were dismissed after that and they exited to walk back out to the gate. Nobody interrupted them.

"How goes your ice bolt practice?" Isendra asked.

"Well," he said. "It's tougher to aim and propel that firebolts or arrows because of their weight, but I've got good timing on it and I hit more targets than I miss."

"Good. Then we shall move onto finishing the trifecta. It is time for you to learn the charged bolt, the most dangerous of the lowest tier of elemental magics." Isendra said.

Finally! Lightning really did seem like the most powerful of the magics, and the most fun seeing as he had some knowledge of electricity, and even that small amount outstripped the rest of the worlds.

They returned to his rock and Isendra put out a hand as if asking for a high five.

"Place your hand a few inches from mine." She instructed.

Izuku did so and was immediately zapped, as if by static shock, but strong enough to almost make his hand numb.

"Now you know what lightning feels like. Focus on that feeling and try to recreate it." She said, keeping her hand in place. "And shock me back."

Izuku did so.

"Owe! Damnit Izuku!" Isendra cried out as she backed away from him. "First try?! Really?!"

Izuku struggled to keep a straight face, but somehow pulled it off. Maybe it had been a smidgen of retaliatory anger at the unexpected shock she had given him, but when he had raised his hand back to hers the magic obeyed and bridged the gap between them in a vindictive arc of electricity with such ease it astounded him as much as her.

"I was expecting that to take all day." She groused. "That just isn't natural. Well the next step is to go practice on a steel sword in the ground, but I didn't come prepared with one."

That made sense. A grounded piece of metal to absorb the shocks safely.

"Am I just supposed to incrementally increase the amount of space between myself and the sword?" he asked.

She rubbed her eyes, fighting the obvious headache he always seemed to cause her when he seemed to know the training regimen before she shared it.

"That is correct." She sighed. "Come on. Let's go get you a sword.

---

"Hmmm." Deckard Cain hummed as he looked over the myriad of things they had placed on the table for him to examine. "The two rings are enchanted with magical protections. One for elemental resistance ot fire, and one for poison."

"To slow the progress of poison or reduce the chance of becoming infected in the first place?" Isendra asked.

"The latter." He said.

Isendra picked up the poison one and dawned it on her index finger, handing the one for fire to Izuku which barely fit on his thumb.

"This staff is far more interesting." He said. "It too provides elemental resistance to fire, much more extremely than the ring. With the two together you can almost walk through fire unharmed. But in addition to that it specifically amplifies power the fire bolt spell and aids the wielder in casting it more quickly. But wait, there's more. It can siphon overspent mana back to the user, if they overcharge the spell, and its biggest boon is an enchantment that amplifies a spells strength when targeting the undead. and has an added reservoir of mana"

Isnedra whistled.

"How did they fit so many enchantments onto a staff?" She asked. "It must have been made by a very skilled enchanter."

"Indeed," Said Cain. "But not quite a master enchanter. The enchantments are static. They do not grow or adapt to the user, as masterfully enchanted items will. All the same, it is an excellent choice in weaponry to your pyromaniac apprentice."

He handed Bane Ash back to Izuku and he marveled at it with a new perspective. It really did seem like providence that he would find such a weapon just before arriving at Tristram. He was sure he wouldn't have done half as well against those hordes without it and they would have had to flee through a rushed portal instead of being victorious.

"Oh! And this little ring here has what I call a laxative enchantment." He said, picking up a small silver one. "It loosens the mana pathways and allows the user to form spells more quickly, thus casting them more quickly."

Izuku chuckled at the humor and Isendra nodded for him to take it. It made sense for him to wear it with his much slower casting speed than her. This one fit on his index well enough.

"Now, I do believe Kashya and Warriv have called a meeting for the whole encampment. We have much to discuss." Cain said before standing up and walking towards the central bonfire.

Isendra and Izuku followed him.

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.

Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room for fanfiction.
$25 per 500 words for original fiction, or anything else that is not fanfiction, as well as for smut/fetish material.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[NonsensicalRants]

Hey! great job formatting the text. Love it. You should probably number the threadmarks though.

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 12:​

Incense and Iron​

---

Izuku was dreaming. As always, he dreamed of the comforts of home. Of cities with buildings of glass and steel reaching to the sky. Of hopeful and noble youth with visions of their future heroism with an optimistic glee filling their naive heads. A world with merciful heroes who fought not only to protect the innocent, but to restore the innocence to those who had lost it and fallen into villainy.

When he woke up it was to return to a world lacking all of that. The comforts of technology, like soft clothes and delicious food, was replaced by rags to wear and far too much meat. The hopeful and optimistic youth were replaced by quiet and despondent elders all around the camp. And those kind merciful heroes were replaced by strong, brutal warriors fighting against enemies incapable of mercy and undeserving of it in return.

Oh, how he missed the sanitary streets of Japan's cities, even as he became used to living among farm animals, including the horrifically smelling billy goats and chickens. And oh, how he missed the baked goods and hot drinks of vending machines. Instead, he was eating a plate of fish, cheese and eggs with enough protein to turn Stephan Hawking into Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight. And yet, he was as grateful for the meal as if it were mana from heaven.

With his belly full he started his day of helping out around the encampment.

He did his usual rounds of making arrows, working on the fence posts and loading Warriv's outgoing carriages or unloading the incoming ones. A quarter of a year doing this manual labor and eating little other than meat had turned his body into stone. Part of him thought he had way too much muscle mass for a twelve-year-old, as he was certain his birthday had passed during his stay but had no idea when. But a larger part of him liked the way he looked.

When there was nothing left to do for the day, he returned to the practice Isendra had assigned him. Electrocuting a sword in the ground with a five foot distance and inching further away as much as he could. By sundown he managed it from six whole feet away. It felt like slow progress, but Isendra corrected that notion.

"You are advancing far faster than I did." She said. "Then again, I did not have the advantage of your sensitivity to mana potions and had to wait much longer between practice sessions. In terms of actual practice time? I think we may be tied."

That actually did reassure him. He had so much catching-up to do that it was nice to know he was doing so quickly.

He went to bed expecting to dream of hot coffee and sweet donuts, but before the dreams could even begin, he was shaken awake. His confusion grew when there was nobody in his tent shaking him, and yet the shaking continued. It wasn't until the screaming started that his sleep-addled brain caught up to what was going on.

He flung the covers off of himself and ran through the open flap, eschewing armor in favor of remaining in his pajamas. Ash Bane was still propped against the side of his tent, and he snatched it up. His feet took him straight to the north side of camp where the telltale glow of fire lit up the night.

Kashya stood surrounded by twenty of her best archers, each firing the occasional arrows into the flaming hole in the north wall and he joined their defensive line.

Alexis filled him in.

"Some maniac strapped bottles of explosive potions to some feral carvers and had them sneak up to our defenses!" She explained. "Isendra and Flavie exited through the main entrance to try and take out any others that might be coming in from the east or west to take down the other walls with the same tactic."

The earth-shattering kaboom from the east told them that they had indeed planned to repeat the tactic with the other walls, and that Flavie or Isendra had stopped one. A similar kaboom soon followed from the west. The night was suddenly brighter from the new fires outside of the camp.

"Do not put out the fire." Kashya instructed from the center of the group. "It will slow their advance into the encampment, and with them forced into such a small gap we can take them out faster than they can advance."

It also cut off their vision of whatever enemies may be beyond the flames, and no sooner did he think this than one of the blue devils managed to charge through towards them into a hail of arrows.

"Preserve your arrows! Wait until you see them before shooting, and only at ones directly in front of you!" Kashya commanded. "And leave any large groupings to Izuku!"

He was already preparing a firebolt at the tip of Ash Bane as she said this, but it went uncast for several minutes as seldom few of the blue fallen made it through the gap and each was quickly mowed down by the archers. But soon the fire blocking their view cleared enough for them to see beyond the wall to the force they were up against.

"That's a lot of zombies." Izuku couldn't stop himself from saying aloud.

He wasn't the only one in the group to take a step back at the sight, just the only one to voice his fear aloud. But he and all of the archers stepped forward again and gritted their teeth.

"Izuku, you handle throwing fireballs into the throngs of undead. Leave any fallen or other threats to us." Kashya ordered.

Izuku obliged, hurling the patient firebolt forward and through the hole in the wall into a grouping of eight zombies just beyond. They exploded into a mist of bone and leathery flesh, down to their fingertips. But the many undead beyond shambled forward, unimpressed by the display of power. They lacked the ability to feel fear.

They entered the routine of battle. Izuku blew apart any groupings of zombies beyond the wall before they could approach, and the many fine women of the Rogues turned any fallen to pass through into pincushions, including one brave shaman that that kindly put out the fire for them with an icy gale before charging in and being fired upon by every single archer present.

The only time they changed up this routine was when an occasional skeleton, far faster than the zombies, charged through and Izuku rewarded it with an ice bolt to center mass.

The night dragged on like this, as the army of undead and demonic forces continued to come in from the north. It was to be a war of attrition, but not a very effective one. Izuku only needed to resort to a mana potion once during the slow combat. His natural mana recovery held him through for most of it. The fighting was so slow that he was even able to split his attention to the sounds of devastation and flashes of lightning to the east where Isendra was off fighting by herself. It sounded like she was handling things just fine, and no additional kabooms from suicide bomber carvers ever filled the night. It was nearly sunrise when the fighting finally stopped. By the dim light of dawn, they could see that the forces they were up against had dwindled to nearly nothing and Kashya sent out a handful of her own to pick off the remaining undead.

"The rest of you, spread out around the camp. Do a head count and estimate the damage." Kashya ordered. "Izuku, come with me."

They all abandoned the north wall to scour the camp while Kashya took Izuku to Akara's tent. There, they found the priestess and Cane standing over a fully prepared but barely used table of medical supplies. Less than a dozen rogues and caravanners sat around it, each was already bandaged from their burns and other injuries and some were even resting peacefully. They were all clearly the victims of the first blast that leveled the north wall.

"Report?" Kashya said to Akara.

"The only injured we received were at the very beginning of the attack." Akara said. "No enemies reached us during the entire night. If Cane was the target, they failed utterly."

"Any dead?' Kashya asked.

"One." Warriv said as he approached. "One of mine. Eric, the former stable hand. He was caught in the first explosion. Now he is with his departed horses we were forced to butcher and eat so long ago."

"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, pardon the pun, but this was a rather pathetic attack." Deckard Cain observed.

"Not in terms of effort and manpower by the enemy." Kashya corrected. "They either severely underestimated us or severely overestimated their own prowess. What is Andarial playing at?"

Just then Mary and her squad of archers approached and saluted Kashya.

"Report." Kashya ordered.

"Just one other dead. No enemies got into the encampment save for the north entrance where we killed them. Nobody is missing. We are still taking inventory of any valuable possessions or artifacts, but everything seems to be accounted for." Mary explained. "We are also testing our food stores, the river and the well for poison."

"And what of the damage to the walls and other protections?" Kashya asked.

"Extensive. It will take at least three days to repair." Mary said. "The cleanup of the enemy bodies will take several more."

Kashya nodded.

"Then for the next week all hands we can spare are to focus on repairing our defenses and disposing of the bodies." She ordered.

None of this made sense. This demoness was ancient, powerful and cunning. If she had wanted to destroy them with this attack, she could have done far better. Hell, most of the zombies, skeletons and even fallen had been unarmed. Or poorly armed, but seldom armored. That didn't make sense either, as he had personally been in skirmishes with random rogue fallen and skeletons who were better equipped than that.

They must be missing something. If the goal wasn't to destroy the encampment, or to kidnap Cane, or to steal anything from them, then what was the goal? Intimidation? No. There was nothing intimidating about that battle. To tire them out for the real attack? Maybe, but with the sun rising they would be able to see such an attack coming for kilometers.

Was it to get some kind of reaction out of them? No, there was no urgency to go kicking any doors in or go on the offensive. The only obvious course of action for them was to rebuild, clean up and get back to doing what they'd been doing before. This would take them an entire week of labor. A week in which they would not be able to devote forces to other tasks, like reconnaissance and attacks on her forces. An entire week free of their watchful gaze and skilled counteroffensive.

"She is stalling us!" Izuku explained. "Andarial sent the attack to stall us. To destroy our infrastructure and tire us out so we can't interrupt whatever she is preparing for or currently doing!"

"So we gathered from your mumbling." Cane said in a deadpan. "You really need to do something about that habit."

Only then did he realize everybody had been staring at him in his moment of deep thought.

He couldn't help it. He blushed.

"Your reasoning is sound, and I believe you are correct." Cane said. "She is either currently attacking another settlement or preparing something big and needs the extra week uninterrupted. That is the only logical explanation for these events."

"I agree." Said Akara.

"As do I." Said Warriv. "But where does that leave us? What is our course of action?"

Kashya was staring off into the distance, deep in thought. When she finally spoke they hung onto every word.

"At risk of being rash." She qualified. "We should go on the offensive now. Attack her stronghold directly since she least expects it and least wants it. But we are all exhausted and we have already lost an entire night of time she was trying to stall for."

"Most of mine are fresh. You can send some of your best ahead." Warriv said, nodding pointedly to Izuku. "In one of my wagons. They can rest along the journey and be scouts for the battle to come. In the meantime, have your forces sleep for the day and prepare for the march."

Kashya considered this suggested slowly, but eventually nodded.

"But we are not enough, not by ourselves. We need more reinforcements." She thought aloud before pointing at Warriv. "You. Go south to the other encampment and tell word of our plan. If you leave now, you should arrive in time for them to send their forces at the same time mine leave."

Warriv nodded and marched off towards his people.

"Where is Gheed?" Kashya demanded.

"Right here, milady." Gheed said in an oddly serious and respectful tone from him.

"Head to the north encampment. Convince them to do the same. If all three of our forces combine for a triple pincer attack on the citadel, we can win." Kashya ordered.

Gheed looked hesitant.

"And how am I supposed to convince them? With my winning charms?" He asked in a sarcastic but illuminating moment of self-awareness.

"I will be sending you both with signed letters. Beyond that? Do whatever it takes." She ordered. "If you succeed then we shall reward you with an entire third of the treasury of the citadel. Which is also yours to convince them to join if need be. Loath as you are to spend money."

Gheed stood straighter at the promise of reward, but deflated slightly at the joke she tagged at the end. Still, he marched away to his small crew of traders.

"Izuku, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you who I am sending as the scouts." Kashya said.

Izuku sighed.

"I'll go tell my mistress." He said.

"Get Flavie to go with you while you're at it." Kashya ordered. "You three seem to work well together."

Cane interrupted him before he went on his way.

"Also, nice shirt. If you can find me the sorcerer who magicked it, I would like to meet them." The ancient man said with a frighteningly knowing smile.

Only then did Izuku realize he was wearing his shirt with the photo of All-Might. The one Isendra had warned him to keep hidden. To think, he had succeeded in doing so for all this time.

"I would very much like to meet the man depicted." Mary added.

"He is very handsome." Said Alexis. "Is he your father? You will have to tell me of him when this is all over."

"Please tell me he is a widower?" Another rogue, Delphi he thought, added teasingly.

Izuku was blushing again as he fled the group.

He made a beeline back to his tent to change before continuing to the south exit.

Walking through the gate he saw that Isendra was already there, along with other gathered rogues. They all formed a loose circle around something on the bridge covered in a blanket. Something human shaped. Several were openly weeping.

---

They held a funeral pyre for Flavie that very morning. They didn't have time to mourn or prepare a proper sending off for their friend and ally. They didn't say much either, for what could they say to honor the woman who gave her life defending them all?

Izuku and Isendra made to leave as soon as the cremation was done. They took up the back of a wagon heading east driven by one of Warriv's men, a gentleman named Mark. With a couple backpacks and all of the worldly possessions they had. Kashya was screaming her orders to the camp as they headed out.

"Pack up everything! Then get some sleep, we head out first thing tomorrow morning!"

Soon they were on the bumpy road towards a fight.

They set up two bedrolls in the back of the wagon and did their best to sleep through the ride. Izuku, being Japanese, had generations of ancestors who mastered the art of sleeping on trains and buses. Naturally, he napped right through the bumpy ride and was bright eyed and ready for the day when Mark woke them up.

"This is as far as I can take you." He said. "The wagon can't go through woodlands, let alone do so unseen. You both have your orders and I have mine."

They got up, packed their bedrolls and exited the wagon to find it was almost night and they were on the edge of the Dark Woods.

"Be safe." Mark blessed them before turning his oxen-dragged wagon around and heading back to the encampment. Or, more likely, someplace further away and far safer.

They had a quick evening breakfast and began their long trek through the dark in silence.

The night was made even darker by the unexpected overcast, but they trudged on without so much as a basic light spell. This was a clandestine mission, they needed to remain unseen and unheard and so they slinked on.

The clouds eventually parted to let down moonlight for them to see by and Izuku discovered the Dark Woods were beautiful and full of life. Sure, he heard the scurrying of rodents and hooting of owls for the entire trek so far, but it was much lovelier to actually see them. It was a great contrast to the lifeless wetlands of the blood marshes.

Around midnight they sat down in a clearing for a rest and lunch. A cool breeze blew through the woods as they did so. It was pleasant, but the smell of moisture it brought was foreboding.

"Please don't rain." Izuku whispered.

"It is not going to rain." Isendra assured him. "It is going to storm. We need to find proper shelter. Our tents will not do."

Izuku blanched at her weather forecast but didn't doubt her.

They scarfed down the last of their food and continued their journey east. Isendra seemed sure they would be able to find shelter, and Izuku assumed she knew of some abandoned buildings near the citadel or other. Failing that, hopefully they could find a cave, but the odds of either being empty of horrors was next to zero.

They found a small creak running eastward and followed it. Soon, the wind picked up and a single bolt of lightning streaked across the sky

"Wait." Isendra ordered, holding up a hand for him to stop.

He heard it too. The creaking of a tree swaying in the sudden breeze. That creaking turned into a crashing noise as something large and dark tumbled from above and into the water. Two similar crashes followed suit from behind them. Izuku couldn't see what they were in the pitch black of night, but he could smell what they were.

Gargantuan beasts. Likely a male and his two females. And they were all sopping wet.

"To me." Isendra ordered.

Izuku felt out for her and, grasping her hand, prepared to do the same thing she probably was.

Two wet enemies surrounding them on either side? That left them with either lightning or ice to take them out. Seeing as he was still mastering basic lightning magic, he went with an ice bolt to the one in front of them and put as much as he could into it in order to slow the beast down. When Isendra lit up the world with her circles of nova lightning he could see that he succeeded in freezing the beast in place, with ice growing up his legs like crystals from the water below. He could also see that it wasn't the run of the meal variety.

It looked more like a Tolkien tree person than a gargantuan beast. He was completely green with branches either outright growing from his body or placed there decoratively.

he was far enough away to safely toss a firebolt at without damaging them, so he did so. When it exploded against his face he went vaulted backwards, leaving his frozen feet behind where they remained in the river. his own weight and the force of Izuku's spell brought him down, and he screamed. Isendra pulled at his hand, and they climbed up the bank of the river as the two females rushed to their mate's aid, straight through where the two sorcerers had been standing a moment early.

Now that they were all nicely grouped and sopping wet, the mistress and apprentice bombarded them with ice spells. Isendra with a long, drawn-out blizzard spell and Izuku with a pair of ice bolts. Then, they cast duel firebolts that shattered the three frozen creatures into pieces.

The forest returned to being dark and silent after that. until another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, and with it's corresponding thunder the wind began to howl as well.

The storm was here.

"If we are lucky we can find their lair." Isendra reasoned.

They ran back across the creek towards where the trio had come from and, sure enough, not ten meters further they found a den, dug out of the earth and decorated with the bones of their prey. But it was raised, it was dry and it would protect them through the storm. In fact, it didn't even smell particularly bad. Just a little musky, like dog or bear hair. The beasts were surprisingly clean animals, spending their days grooming and they avoided relieving themselves in their own dens.

Every inch of the floor was covered in pelts, from wolves, bears, deer and cows. He wouldn't go so far as to call them leather, as they weren't properly tanned, but instead likely licked clean. In all honesty? With some incense the place would be perfectly livable. Fortunately, he had some from Akara.

"Our lightning and ice spells should be easily confused for lightning from the storm if anybody even saw it." Isendra told him.

Funnily enough, his mind had wandered directly to that same concern as he put down his pack and dug through it for the bottle of incense oil. Finding it, he took a rag and began wiping it around the walls of the den.

"What of the firebolts?" He asked.

"When lightning strikes dry foliage, what usually results?" She asked rhetorically. "But it was probably unwise to resort to fire. We shall wait and see. If an army comes to our doorstep, we will know."

Izuku nodded.

"I'll take first watch." He offered. "Seeing as you didn't sleep as well during our wagon ride.

His mistress nodded gratefully and put down her bedroll over the furs and he was certain she passed out as soon as she lay down.

The sound and smell of rain started outside, skipping past the usual drizzle in favor of a full downpour. It would make both their and Kashya's journey eastward more difficult from stomping through the mud. That was assuming it stopped by morning. If not, then the journey would be even more difficult, but part of him hoped it continued for the next two days.

The extra difficulty of the trek would be more than made up for by the cover it would provide them in hiding their approach to the citadel.

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.

Prices:

$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room for fanfiction.

$25 per 500 words for original fiction, or anything else that is not fanfiction, as well as for smut/fetish material.

Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.

 

[CILinkz]

Thought they would maybe find shelter in a certain abandoned castle cellar

 

[NonsensicalRants]

Thought they would maybe find shelter in a certain abandoned castle cellar

Click to shrink...

That's the next chapter.

 

[Foxykobold57]

So how far is this story going to on the time-line? Just diablo 2 and the expansion, or into diablo 3 as well?

 

[Magikuser]

Chapter 13:

Descending Tower of Blood​

---

The storm had not subsided when Izuku awoke the next morning, but it had died down. The rain and sleet were minimal, but the overcast clouds and wind were turned up to eleven. They could easily hike through it without being heard, nor would they hear anybody else. If they kept to the foliage and trees they could remain completely undetected up to their goal.

"I have already packed the rings and amulets you found. I did my best to alter the chain mail to fit you, and the throwing daggers are in your pack." Isendra told him. "And those potions you didn't recognize are called strangling potions. If you throw or break one, it releases a plume of poisonous gas. You will want to be careful with them, but I'm entrusting them to you all the same. As a means of escape."

During the first watch Izuku had searched the den and that was all he found. He didn't feel any great magic from the rings or amulets, but they would take the things to Cane all the same. Who knew? They could be powerful after all.

He removed his hard leather armor and put the chainmail on underneath it before re-donning his clothes. They weren't nearly as form-fitting as Isendra's, but he would grow into them. Or, more likely, he'd find better armor long before that.

"We shall eat as we walk, come along." Isendra ordered.

Izuku donned his pack, snatched up the bread, cheese and cured meat that passed for a sandwich and followed her out.

The howling wind tore at their skin as they advanced eastward, and the rare drop of rain felt like sewing needles made of ice piercing their skin. They marched on all the same.

He did his best to eat his breakfast as they walked, but the wind fought to steal it from him every step of the way. Between that and his constant weariness, checking every which way for Fallen, undead or worse, it did not make for a pleasant meal. By the time he finished it, the rain and sleet were beginning to pick back up and the clouds were darkening once more. Still, they trailed forward until mid-morning when the storm returned in full force.

There they were, in the middle of a storm, soaked to their toes and without any sign of shelter in sight. They began running forward through the dark trees and underbrush, with him holding onto Isendra's belt to help her keep a pace that he could follow. They came across no best or fallen as they ran, uncaring of the noise they were making for even they could not hear it over the wind and thunder.

Soon, Isendra stopped and looked back to make sure she had his attention. When their eyes met she motioned northward. He followed her pointing with his gaze but saw nothing. When she withdrew her staff he followed her example and they creeped forward. When they broke through the next line of trees he saw what she must have noticed from her taller vantage point, a roof of rough stone above the next line of trees. They creeped towards those ones as well and peered beyond it.

A single stone building, perfectly square but crumbling, stood steadfastly against the storm. A clearing of unkempt grass and leafy detritus surrounded it, but no sign of watchmen or life of any kind. It even lacked a door, and from the outside the place looked like it ought to be condemned. Isendra nodded for them to charge forward. Fire bolt at the ready, Izuku did so and together they sprinted through the last of the rain they would suffer for that day.

He let the spell die on his lips when they entered a room barren of life or anything else really. The ability to hear his own footsteps as they fled away from the open doorway was like being a deaf man given a hearing aid. It was a relief beyond words.

Isendra put down her pack and, with a wave of her hand over it, drew all the water from the leather and cloth container. She then did the same thing to her body, as if wringing out her clothes with mana.

"Um." Izuku said questioningly.

She looked at him and took pity, performing the same quasi-spell on him.

"I don't know why water spells never occurred to me." He said dejectedly.

"Because they have no combative use, outside of being a precursor to ice spells." Isendra told him "But little spells like those can do wonders for comfort, morale and utility."

He nodded at the wisdom.

By now their eyes had adjusted to the dark abode, as had their other senses.

Izuku immediately felt something wrong about the place, and his eyes focused on the ladder leading into a gap in the floor. Presumably, to a cellar, but his senses warned of something far worse. Much like the feeling of magic, but thicker, heavier, like tree sap that reeked of rotten meat.

"You feel it too, Izuku?" His mistress asked.

He nodded gravely.

"A twisted miasma, a living madness. There is evil in this tower." She said, "Or more accurately, beneath it. And seeing as we cannot leave, let us cleanse it."

Izuku nodded again and let her take point. She approached the ladder and cast a simple light spell from her hand, peering down. She motioned that the way was clear and climbed down the rickety structure. Izuku feared it would snap under her weight, not that she had a significant amount of it, but because he heard several of the rungs crack when she stepped on them.

She held her arms out for him to throw her something and looking around he realized their packs were still where they had left them. It would not do to leave those behind. He tossed hers down first, then his. Figuring he weighed significantly less than her, he climbed down after her instead of opting to jump into her arms as well and it held.

The room they entered was almost identical to the one above, save for the loose bones strewn about and several puddles of fresh blood. It looked like they weren't the only ones to try and shelter there from the storm. Most notably of all, was a broken down wall where it looked as if a giant mole had burrowed into it and down into the earth below.

This time, he took point. He crawled forward with bended knees and peered beyond, only to discover somebody had buried the French catacombs beneath the small building. Barely wrapped skeletons filled crevices in the wall and well-maintained torches lined the walls at seemingly random points. Oh yah, this place was definitely occupied.

He walked through the hole in the wall and Isendra followed him through. Before they could even catch their bearings they were pounced upon by two crimson goats. Scratch that, they were goat men, and they were completely covered in blood. They looked more intimidating than they actually were. The first fell to an ice bolt through the heart, the second Isendra merely bashed on the neck with her staff, creating a satisfying crack of breaking vertebrae.

They glanced at each other and both shrugged, before continuing on their way.

As they went deeper they came upon a wide open hallway of pillars and torches. It held multiple exits, one on each wall, and from each of them swarmed in horrors Izuku had not seen before. More of those bloody goat men, a strange birdlike creature made of ethereal mist and ectoplasmic bone and gray fallen. Most startling of all were tall, blue women with horns dressed in the garb of Kashya's rogues.

Isendra and Izuku turned the entire hall into a Christmas light show. Pulsing waves of lightning and repeating fireballs scorched every inch of the walls, ceiling and floor until nothing remained of their enemies but splattered and cooked bodies.

"So. What are the blue rogue mimics all about?" Izuku asked.

"They are corrupted rogues. Their souls poisoned by darkness in life and bodies transformed into what you saw in death. You witnessed part of the process for creating one in the burial grounds." Isendra explained.

Izuku felt his stomach churn.

That was what they were trying to turn sweet Alexis and haughty Mary into? That was abominable, not least of all because the real women themselves were far superior warriors than this trash. Smarter, wiser, kinder, and more skilled in every way. Even if you were evil, the efficacy of these undead hordes was so minimal that he had to wonder why they bothered.

His wondering didn't last long, for he knew the reason. Psychological warfare. What they lacked in combat ability they made up for by inspiring terror and disgust and despair in the loved ones of those taken.

And descend they did. Into a second level, then a third. Along the way they faced no challenge, not even by the pitiful standards of the first level of this death trap. It was on the fourth level that this finally changed. There they were confronted by a wall of corrupted archers that unleashed their arsenal on them. They retreated back through the doorway they came from, and the arrows bounced harmlessly against the stone walls.

They heard the entire line of archers march a single step forward and a few took potshots through the doorway from the far left and right sides, hoping to get them at an angle.

"We need to draw them nearer, so that we can get them all in a few spells." Isendra whispered over to him.

They heard the entire phalanx march another step forward. These ones probably hadn't caught onto them being sorcerers, or else they would have preferred to stay back and hole up. They were in for a big surprise.

Izuku and Isendra took turns peeking out and throwing loose rubble at the dumb undead. Each time they did so more arrows flew through the gap and they barely avoided having their faces turned into pin cushions. It was working, as each time they fired they took a step forward and upon peaking one last time he realized they were close enough for a nova.

"Okay, I'm going to coat you in ice armor. I need you to flee back but be seen so they can all fire on you, then I'll vault out there and get them with a nova. I'll need you to come in after me." Isendra explained quickly.

Izuku accepted his role as target practice with a nod and with a wave of her hand Isendra coated him in a thick layer of ice. His entire body now felt comfortably cool with the thick two-inch layer of solidified water covering everything except his face and joints. It did feel a little cumbersome though. Isendra repeated the spell on herself and nodded for Izuku to begin.

He covered his head with both hands and ran backwards away from the door, but listed towards the line of sight of the door so all of the archers beyond could see him. His first indication that they did was the ten or so arrows pelting him in the back, each feeling like the strike of a hammer even through the three layers of armor he wore. His second indication was the eleventh through twentieth arrows either whizzing past him or landing true themselves.

When the telltale flash and clap of lighting filled the hallway from behind him, he turned around, gritted his teeth and charged through, letting loose fire bolt after firebolt at the neatly organized line of archers. The larger, yellow one in the middle took three all to himself, but by the end of his barrage they were all reduced to bonemeal, and he was reduced to a crumpled heap on the ground.

"Owwwwww." He groaned as he took off his hard leather coat and lifted the chain mail beneath it.

As he expected, Isendra came to him to look at the damage.

"That is already bruising. Let me get you a healing potion." Isendra consoled.

"Mana too, please." He asked nicely.

Rapid firing fire bolts could really take it out of you.

Isendra handed him said mana potion and he drank it while she rubbed a handful of healing potion onto his upper and lower back.

It took a few moments of deep breathing and tentative stretching before he was confident enough to stand up. He refastened his chainmail and made to do the same with the hard leather armor, but got a good look at it first. Several of the arrows had gotten through the ice and pierced the leather. If it weren't for the recently discovered chainmail he would have been a goner. hell, if they had been equipped with proper bows and well-maintained arrows instead of the rusted and worn out crap he would have been a goner. Isendra must have taken all of this into account, or else she never would have suggested such a stupid maneuver.

He re-donned his leather armor before picking up his pack and Bane Ash.

"I am ready to go on, mistress." He said apologetically.

The fourth level was filled with more of those ghostly aspirations, each like a misshapen bird made of ghostly bones. Eerie-looking, but not particularly tough.

"They are ghosts, Izuku. Wraiths." Isendra said. "Driven mad, consumed with hatred for the living

Izuku took this in stride. After all, he'd dealt with sorcerers, zombies and demons. Why should ghosts be a surprise? Even if they didn't resemble what he imagined tainted ghosts would look like.

And thus, they descended to the fifth floor beneath the ground. The air felt different here. It was warmer, more humid. It smelled like clean steel and bathroom tile.

"I think this is it." He said.

"I agree. Step carefully." She commanded.

They creeped through the empty halls like thieves in the night, as they went deeper the humidity grew until their vision was filled with thin, but noticeable steam. Following it they came to be inside of a great hall of sorts, with walls covered in scones of fire. For the most part, it looked like normal, if large and tiled, great dining hall devoid of all furnishings. In fact, the only thing worthy of note was a large tub in the middle of the room.

Jacuzzi was a better word for it, one filled with thick, red, boiling blood.

He wasn't expecting a beautiful, butt-naked woman to slowly rise out of it like an AV actress, but he was unsurprised by the fact that she almost looked to be made completely out of blood herself, even her eyes.

"Ah, guests. Care to join me for a blood bath?" The thing said to them.

Izuku hurled a firebolt at her and it exploded against her face. He half-expected her to splatter like a water balloon full of blood, but instead it exploded against her with seemingly no harm, only for her to then catch fire.

She was cackling as the flames consumed her, and Izuku realized they were almost certainly her own flames.

Okay then. Fire not good. Fire not friend.

He switched gears in favor of hurling ice bolts at her while Isendra hurled chain lightning at her.

Neither slowed her down to a notable degree as she charged towards them and so they split to either side so as not to cluster. This turned out to be an extraordinarily good decision as a split second later a wall of fire erupted where they had just been standing. A real one, the kind that made his attempts at the spell seem like that first attempt at a firebolt in comparison to the real thing.

With her attention split between them she chose to focus on the obviously stronger of the two and bore down on Isendra.

Izuku took the open invitation to shoot her in the back, but shooting her in the back repeatedly. He aimed directly for the spine and the third ice bold pierced it right above the base, where it met the pelvis. What would have left most people incapable of using their legs did nothing to slow her down. Not even the usual slowing effect of ice spells seemed to slow her arrogant walk towards Isendra. The flames enveloping and emanating from her erased all ice almost before it hit her.

He was now on the other side of the boiling pool of blood with their battle taking place beyond it. The steam was finally letting down somewhat, probably from all of the ice spells flying around, but he noticed the rage with which the pool boiled also seemed to have dampened since the fight began. This gave him an idea.

It was only a hunch, but his ice bolts weren't doing as much as he would have hoped, and it was surely worth a shot.

He rolled up his sleeves and coated his hands in the magical aura of ice before dunking them into the pool of crimson liquid. Then, he pulled on it, on all of the heat within and forced it to rise. White hot steam poured upwards in thick plumes, screeching like a whistle as the cracking sound of ice crystals forming came from below. A few moments later the entire pool was frozen solid.

He heard the blood-bather's scream. It sounded like his hunch was correct, her power and resilience did come from the blood. But he could not see the result of his work through the steam which now filled the entire grand hall and was so thick he could barely make out the tip of his staff in front of him.

Then, all of the steam rushed away from him as if being sucked into a typhoon and he saw it coalesce and freeze around the form of a woman, yellowed and rotten and screaming at the top of her lungs. Without her power source her true form was revealed. Isendra was standing behind her, casting a modified blizzard spell to take advantage of all the moisture in the air as fuel and force it into the dried-up old corpse they had been fighting. She screamed and screamed but her voice did nothing to slow the freezing of her entire body. When her screaming ended, she was a solid block of ice and mummified flesh.

Isendra raised her staff and, like a batter at the plate, swung at the other woman's head, shattering it into pieces.

"Hit her again!" Izuku yelled.

She obliged, swinging at the legs and snapping them apart. With the support of those limbs gone the rest of her body fell to the floor and broke apart like pottery thrown to the ground.

"Crazy Bitch." Isendra snarled before spitting on the remains.

She walked to where Izuku stood over the frozen pool of blood.

"Good instincts, my apprentice." She complimented.

Izuku bowed appreciatively but knew not to let the compliment get to his head.

Isendra walked past him to the far door. She kept her staff raised as she advanced through it, prepared for more fighting. Izuku made sure to be prepared for a fight as well as he followed her in.

What they entered could only be described as a treasure room.

The walls were covered in well-maintained weapons and armor, art pieces and several impaled corpses that were currently on fire. The centerpiece of the room was a large treasure chest that may as well have had a "Take me" sign written above it.

Their first order of business was to put out the burning corpses. They did so with a weak ice spell that probably didn't have a name and which Izuku was easily able to imitate after seeing Isendra perform it once. Each of the women was unrecognizable. but though their faces, clothes and bodies were charred black he strongly suspected they were rogues. They laid them down in more peaceful positions out of respect and intended to share this information with Kashya when they next saw her.

With that done they finally took to examining the horde.

Isendra made a beeline for the staff on the back wall, one decorated in vines and leaves like English ivy. She hovered her hand just over it and caressed the air an inch away. He could tell she was feeling the magic within to try her best at identifying it or identify as much as she could without Cane there.

Izuku went straight for the chest and opened it without hesitation. He was honestly surprised to find it full of treasure, like a real-life pirate's chest. Loose rubies and charms covered the bottom, separated by nearly a dozen coin purses, each so full to the brim of coins they looked like they might tear if lifted. At the very center, cleared of all other treasure, were two perfect trapeziums of stone with markings on them.

Isendra whistled appreciatively from behind him, somehow having snuck up on him while he looked through the chest.

"Now those, my young apprentice, are real treasures." She told him.

"What are they?" He asked.

"Rune stones. TAL, and ETH." She failed to explain. "I suppose it is time I taught you about them."

---

This story was ghostwritten by NonsensicalRants as commissioned by Magikuser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.

Prices:

$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room for fanfiction.

$25 per 500 words for original fiction, or anything else that is not fanfiction, as well as for smut/fetish material.

Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him

 

[Blasterbot]

Solid mage starter for Stealth armor eh? can't say I bothered much with the lower end rune words. still if you got only one life good gear is vital.

 

[InZodwetrust]

What type of monster was the blood woman?

 

[zebrin]

What type of monster was the blood woman?

Click to shrink...

She was a type of demonic Vampire. Based on the Countess Elizabeth Bathory.

 

[InZodwetrust]

She was a type of demonic Vampire. Based on the Countess Elizabeth Bathory.

Click to shrink...

Oh she also appears in Diablo Immortal (which is the only one I've played), but her appearance was changed.

Spoiler: The Countess (Just Revived)

Spoiler: The Countess (Diablo Immortal)

 

[NonsensicalRants]

Oh she also appears in Diablo Immortal (which is the only one I've played), but her appearance was changed.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I took some creative liberty. Mostly from the idea that they reached her earlier that canon would have. She was still reforming her body. I do that a lot, this isn't the first time or last time. It's fanfiction, I'm allowed to make the world more expansive, made the characters more interesting and fill the world with more people.