"Huh. Still in one piece." Isaiah muttered, patting himself down.
Once satisfied the glowing circle hadn't harmed him, he took in his surroundings. A dense forest swallowed the light whole. What little managed to slip through the leaves did nothing but carve long, thin shadows between the trees.
He scanned the treeline. Nothing moved. But he knew better.
"I know you didn't drag me all the way out here just to hide behind some bushes," he said, voice calm.
The answer came from behind him.
A massive figure exploded from the dark, war hammer already in motion, aimed to crush his skull. Isaiah dropped low without looking, letting the hammer's arc pass through empty air. The weapon slammed into the earth with a deafening sound that shook the ground and kicked up a wall of dust.
When the dust settled, Isaiah's foot was sitting on top of the hammer, pinning it to the ground. The big man gripped the handle and pulled. Nothing. He pulled harder, veins rising at the side of his head. The hammer didn't move.
"Oh. Am I too heavy?" Isaiah asked, not even breathing hard.
He drove his heel down. The hammer sank deeper into the dirt. Igor's grip nearly tore free.
"Wait... I know you." Isaiah tilted his head, studying the man's straining face. "You're Igor, right—"
Rings of shaped energy screamed out of the trees before he could finish. Isaiah pushed off the hammer, letting the first three beams pass harmlessly under his feet. At the top of his leap he twisted, snapped a kick into the side of Igor's face that sent the big man tumbling into the undergrowth, and landed in a crouch.
Another beam came straight for his chest faster, t. But Isaiah's hand moved faster. He removed his sword from the scabbard in one clean motion, and he cut straight through the beam, splitting it in two. Both halves burned past him and died out behind his back.
He stood still for a heartbeat, watching the last sparks die. Then he vanished.
The shooter, an auburn-haired young man crouched in the treeline, spun just as Isaiah reappeared behind him. Knuckles caught him across the jaw and he hit the ground hard. He scrambled to rise, but Isaiah planted a boot on his chest and pressed down, knocking every gasp of air out of his lungs.
"Did you bring me here?"
Rand didn't answer. He just fought uselessly to shove the weight off.
Isaiah drove Babel into the ground inch from Rand's skull. The young man froze, eyes sliding sideways to the transparent blade humming beside his head.
In the dim forest light, the sword was finally visible in full. It was a longsword, straight and double-edged, tapering to a sharp point. The blade itself was strange. it was transparent like glass, like frozen light shaped into a weapon. The edges caught the thin sunlight and scattered it in white lines. The grip was dark, tightly wrapped, and at the base sat an angular silver pommel.
Rand's breath came fast and shallow.
Isaiah crouched, forearms resting on his knee. "Pretty cool huh?" He asked
"I call it Babel"
"It's name is actually inspired by story about the tower of Babel"
He tapped the clear blade with his finger. It chimed like a struck crystal glass.
"You see, most people think the tower of Babel was built so humans could reach the gods." He tilted his head. "That's not it. It was built so the gods could come down to them. A landing point. The people believed that if they built high enough, believed hard enough, something divine would descend"
"They'd know a god had arrived because certain things would happen: crops would flourish, they'd have great fortune in war, that sort of thing."
Isaiah stopped, looking down at his sword. "What if I told you Babel can do exactly that? What if I told you this sword is one of those landing points?"
He chuckled, then answered himself in a mocking voice. "Oh, but Isaiah, those are false gods. They aren't real."
"But I never said anything about them needing to be real. It doesn't matter if they're real or false. All that matters is whether you believe hard enough."
"Oh...the power of the mind"
"The greatest gift we were ever given"
"Now....Let's see if any god will honor our invitation, shall we?"
Isaiah went silent.
The forest followed.
The humming from Babel deepened, The transparent surface began to ripple and then something moved inside it.
A silhouette formed within the sword. Tall, impossibly thin, its outline never settling into a single shape. A smile appeared first. Wide. Cruel. Then two glowing eyes that fixed directly on Rand.
The pressure in the forest became a physical weight.
Isaiah watched the blade with the pleased expression of a craftsman admiring his work.
"Oh," he breathed. "We got one."
From the undergrowth, Igor was on his feet again. He saw Isaiah standing over Rand, sword abandoned in the dirt, back turned. He charged, hammer raised, roaring.
Rand's eyes went wide. "Igor, wait!"
But Igor had already swung with every ounce of his strength straight at the Isaiah he saw in front of him. The hammer passed through the image like smoke. The illusion of Isaiah and Rand scattered into mist, and Igor stumbled through empty air, momentum carrying him forward, confusion freezing his limbs.
Something sharp and ice-cold punched through his chest from behind.
He looked down. The transparent tip of Babel protruded from the center of his chest, slick with his own blood. Behind him, Isaiah's voice came soft and almost kind.
"Loki says hello."
The blade withdrew. Igor collapsed to his knees, hands clutching the wound, blood spilling through his fingers into the dirt. His hammer crashed down beside him.
Rand stared, trembling. He had watched Igor charge in the completely wrong direction, swinging at nothing, never noticing Isaiah standing right behind him with that terrible sword.
It had been a lie. The god inside Babel had told a lie, and Igor had believed it with his whole heart.
Isaiah turned, flicking blood from the blade with a casual snap of his wrist. "I told you it was cool."
Something in Rand snapped. He screamed, and three glowing rings burst from his wrist, orbiting his arms in smooth, humming circles. They exploded outward. one low, one wide, one straight for Isaiah's face.
Isaiah tilted his head, letting the first pass. The second curved toward his ribs, but he sidestepped as if he'd known its path all along. The third arrived fast.
CLANG.
Babel intercepted it without Isaiah even looking. The ring shattered.
Rand didn't slow. He launched himself forward, rings pulling his body through the air like currents. One ring looped his waist, another his forearm, spinning faster and faster, loading momentum. He slammed a palm into Isaiah's chest.
BOOM.
Stored energy detonated. The blast sent Isaiah rocketing backward through two ancient trees, wood splintering and crashing.
Before the debris settled, Rand's rings recalled, whipping back through the forest and circling him once more.
Isaiah stepped out of the wreckage. Dust fell from his shoulders. His armor was barely scuffed. He rolled his neck once, as if shaking off a mild cramp.
"Not bad," Isaiah admitted.
In that brief exchange, he'd already formed a rough idea of Rand's ability.
The reason Rand had closed the distance so quickly wasn't raw speed.
Halfway through his charge, Rand had simply vanished and reappeared several feet closer, catching Isaiah completely off guard.
A teleportation ability.
Interesting.
"This is going to be more fun than I thought."
Rand didn't respond.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then the sound of snapping branches echoed through the forest.
One.
Then another.
Footsteps followed, growing steadily louder as they approached.
Rand's expression changed.
A smile slowly spread across his face.
"To tell the truth," he said, "I did bring you here."
Isaiah raised an eyebrow.
"And you weren't the only one."
His attention shifted past Rand.
Two figures emerged from the darkness between the trees and came to a stop beside him.
One was an orange-haired boy Isaiah didn't recognize.
The other made his expression falter for the briefest moment.
The amusement disappeared from his eyes.
Replaced by something colder.
Something sharper.
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't see this coming," Isaiah said quietly. "But I thought my warning yesterday would've been enough to prevent it."
The second figure stepped fully into a shaft of sunlight breaking through the canopy.
Isaiah exhaled through his nose.
A mixture of disappointment and irritation crossed his face.
"You really are a stubborn one..."
His gaze locked onto the newcomer.
"Michael."