Casper's fist was still trapped in Isaiah's hand. His expression had not recovered from what he had just witnessed. Greed had reached the absolute limit of what his body could currently produce, and Isaiah had accepted every bit of it without so much as a bruise.
Isaiah looked at Casper for another second, then shifted his grip.
Casper barely had time to register the movement.
Isaiah stepped forward and drove his palm into Casper's chest.
The strike was almost casual.
Casper disappeared from in front of him.
His body flew backward across the clearing, struck the ground once, then bounced through the dirt before crashing into the trunk of a tree several dozen feet away. The wood cracked around his back, leaves shaking loose from the branches above him.
Michael stood motionless with his dagger still in his hand. Rand and Igor were in similar states.
Isaiah looked between them.
His brow furrowed.
"What?"
That somehow made it worse.
It was not as though Godframe was a secret.
Anyone who knew anything about the Great Families knew the Salvatores were not built like ordinary people. Stories about their physical abilities had circulated for generations. Even members of the bloodline who never awakened God's Eyes possessed strength, speed, durability and resilience that ordinary Awakened had to train years to approach.
Not every Salvatore received God's Eyes.
But every Salvatore received the body meant to survive them.
Knowing that was one thing. Seeing it firsthand was another.
After getting no response, Isaiah set his sights on the tree on his far right. Rand followed his eyes and landed on Babel, still stuck in a tree.
In a flash, Isaiah dashed towards it.
"Don't let him get to that sword!" Rand screamed.
Isaiah's eyes had barely settled on the transparent blade lodged in the distant tree when he moved.
The ground cracked beneath his first step.
Igor intercepted him before he had crossed half the clearing. Tecton came down from above with enough force to flatten the earth beneath them, but Isaiah shifted aside at the last instant.
The hammerhead tore into the ground beside him. Igor did not pause. He twisted with the momentum, dragged the weapon free and swung horizontally for Isaiah's ribs.
Isaiah leaned backwards.
"How the hell are you that bigger and that fast?"
Tecton came smashing into his chest. Isaiah managed to get his arms up in time, blocked the attack, but the impact hurled him away.
Michael appeared at Isaiah's blind side and drove the blade toward his neck. Isaiah caught his wrist, but Michael released the weapon before Isaiah could control the arm. The dagger dropped into Michael's other hand.
He stabbed again. Isaiah twisted his head aside.
A kick struck Isaiah between the shoulder blades and sent him back.
Isaiah turned in mid-step, caught Igor's next swing with both hands and stopped Tecton inches from his face.
"I'm getting really tired of this hammer," Isaiah said. Essence began to flow through his hand as his grip on the hammer hardened.
Small cracks began to appear.
"No!" Igor screamed as he pulled the hammer back.
Isaiah stepped into him and drove his heel into the side of Igor's knee.
The joint buckled with a sickening crack.
Igor's roar tore through the forest as his leg collapsed beneath him. His grip finally loosened, and Tecton slipped from his hands.
Isaiah let the hammer fall.
Michael came from the side again. Isaiah ducked beneath the first punch. He drove an elbow toward Michael's stomach, but Michael became intangible. Isaiah's arm passed through him.
Michael solidified behind him and locked both arms around Isaiah's torso.
"I need your help here, big guy!" Michael said.
Igor looked up, and pain twisted across his face. One leg refused to support him, but he dug his good foot into the ground and forced himself upright.
Isaiah's expression changed slightly as Igor charged.
Isaiah planted his feet and tried to throw Michael over his shoulder, but Michael simply became intangible wherever Isaiah attempted to grab him while keeping enough of himself solid to maintain the restraint.
Annoying.
Very annoying.
Igor lunged.
It was ugly now, nothing like his previous movements from earlier. With one ruined knee, he threw his enormous body forward using his remaining leg and sheer momentum.
Igor slammed into the both of them, but Michael became completely intangible at the instant of impact.
Igor's enormous arms closed around Isaiah's torso and crushed him against his chest.
Michael stumbled clear, immediately putting distance between himself and the two of them.
Isaiah looked down at the arms wrapped around him, then slowly raised his eyes towards Igor.
"Igor, buddy. At least buy me a drink first."
He wedged both hands between Igor's forearms and began forcing them apart.
Igor gritted his teeth.
"You joke too much."
Isaiah continued pulling Igor's arms apart by an inch and then another.
"But joke not save you when I break you."
Then something happened.
Igor's body began expanding again.
His shoulders broadened. His chest thickened against Isaiah's back, while muscle packed itself across his arms until each forearm seemed to swell beneath Isaiah's hands. His bones lengthened and reinforced themselves beneath the flesh. The ground sank beneath Igor's remaining foot as his increasing weight pressed into the earth.
Igor's gift was called Magnitude.
Calling Igor's Gift simple gigantification had never accurately described what it did.
This gift allows Igor to proportionally enlarge and physiologically reinforce his entire body while automatically recalibrating his nervous and muscular systems to efficiently control the increased mass. The greater his size, the greater his physical capabilities, but also the greater the Essence cost required.
Igor did not merely become larger.
Magnitude scaled his entire physiology.
As his body expanded, muscle fibres thickened to support the additional mass. Bones increased in density. Tendons and joints reinforced themselves. His cardiovascular system adapted to sustain a body that should have collapsed beneath its own increasing weight.
Most importantly, his nervous system changed with everything else.
The greater distances impulses needed to travel through his enlarged body were compensated for by faster neural transmission and greater muscular response. His balance recalibrated. His coordination adjusted. His reflexes adapted to his new proportions.
His Gift refused to let size become a disadvantage.
Every stage of Magnitude gave Igor more mass, greater reach, greater durability and vastly greater physical force while allowing him to control the resulting body as naturally as his original one.
But Magnitude could not create Essence.
Igor's reserves remained finite.
The larger he became, the more Essence his transformed body consumed simply to maintain itself. At moderate sizes, the expenditure was manageable. Beyond that, every additional increase placed a greater burden on his reserves.
Eventually, Igor would reach a size his Essence could no longer sustain.
For the first time since the fight began, Isaiah had to put genuine effort into breaking the giant's grip.
And several metres away, while every eye had been fixed on Igor, Rand raised his hands.
Three metallic rings lifted silently from the ground and aligned.
Rand's hands trembled as every bit of his Essence poured from his body. Blue light crawled across his arms like veins before flowing into the first Halo.
The ring began to glow.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Isaiah's expression sharpened. Rand had stopped trying to use the Halos as weapons and was now using them as amplifiers.
The first Halo gathered the Essence into a sphere of brilliant blue light.
Michael realized what he was about to do. "Rand, what are you doing? You'll hit Igor too!"
"Do you have a better plan?!" Rand retorted.
The first Halo fired.
A thick beam of Essence tore across the clearing and entered the second ring, which compressed it.
The beam emerging from the opposite side was thinner, brighter and considerably more violent.
Then it entered the third Halo.
Cracks of blue light erupted through the forest as the final Halo forced the Essence into a beam.
The air distorted around it.
The final Halo released.
Straight into Isaiah and Igor.
Blue swallowed the forest.
Trees were ripped from the earth. The ground split open beneath the attack. A column of blue Essence carved through the forest for hundreds of metres, leaving a burning trench behind it.
Rand staggered as the Halos dropped around him. Smoke rose from his arms.
He stared into the devastation.
"Did..." His breathing was ragged. "Did we get him?"
Two bodies lay within the smoke.
Above the battlefield, the enormous numbers displaying the remaining members of each team flickered.
Rebellion's count dropped by one.
Michael and Rand both understood what it meant.
Igor hadn't survived.
As the smoke thinned, the enormous body lying closest to them became clearer. Magnitude had already begun to release its hold on Igor, his enlarged frame gradually returning towards his natural proportions. What remained of his body was badly burned and completely motionless, the damage from Rand's attack leaving little room for doubt.
Rand stared for only a moment before his attention shifted towards the second figure.
The fact that they were still in the simulation meant that Isaiah did not share Igor's fate.
Isaiah's body was now in full view. He knelt on both knees and faced downwards, his exposed skin scorched, with angry burns spreading across one side of his torso and down his arm. Part of his white hair had been singed away, leaving one side noticeably shorter while the remaining ends were blackened from the heat.
His expression had gone distant, the battle momentarily forgotten as his eyes moved from the first ring to the second, then finally to the third.
"A beam of pure Essence," Isaiah muttered.
His gaze dropped to his own hand.
Raw Essence could leave the body. That had never been the problem. The problem was what happened once it did. Without the body's pathways to contain it, or a Gift capable of imposing a stable form upon it, raw Essence rapidly lost cohesion in open air. It spread, weakened and dispersed. At close range, that loss could be negligible. Over any meaningful distance, there would barely be enough left to hurt someone.
Isaiah glanced down at the burns covering his torso and arm.
"That hurt. A lot."
Rand stared at him, too exhausted to respond.
Isaiah's attention shifted towards the three Halos scattered across the ruined clearing. "Using those rings as an external pathway was a great idea. I didn't even know you could use them like that."
His eyes lingered on them for another moment before returning to Rand.
"But you didn't have to." Isaiah raised his hand.
"With enough Essence, you can bypass the need for an external pathway."
A faint blue glow gathered around his fingers.
Rand's expression changed.
Isaiah smiled.
"And unfortunately for you, I have a lot of Essence."
Blue light erupted around his arm.
Isaiah extended his index and middle fingers, folding the others into his palm until his hand resembled a gun. Essence surged through his arm and gathered at his fingertips, growing brighter by the second.
Then he fired.
An enormous torrent of raw Essence exploded from his hand.
It began losing cohesion almost immediately. The edges of the projection peeled apart into brilliant blue wisps that scattered into the surrounding air. The farther it travelled, the wider and more unstable it became, bleeding enormous quantities of Essence into the atmosphere.
It didn't matter.
Isaiah simply fed it more.
Every fraction of a second, the atmosphere stripped Essence from the projection. Every fraction of a second, Isaiah replaced what had been lost with another overwhelming surge. The beam was dispersing exactly as raw Essence should, but Isaiah's output exceeded the rate at which that dispersion could collapse it.
There was nothing elegant about it. Nothing efficient. It was an obscene waste of Essence, forcing an impossible quantity of energy in a single direction and continuously replacing everything the open air tore away.
Straight towards Rand and Michael.
Michael's eyes widened.
His body vanished from the living world.
The beam passed through him.
Rand wasn't so fortunate.
He had poured almost everything he possessed into the Halos of Judgment. His Essence reserves were spent, his body exhausted, and whatever physical ability remained was nowhere near enough to carry him out of the path of an attack that wide.
Rand looked at the approaching wall of blue.
For a moment, he seemed almost amused by the absurdity of it.
He had needed three Rings to accomplish what Isaiah was doing through sheer excess.
Rand closed his eyes.
"Fuck."
The beam consumed him.
Michael stood alone in the silence that followed.
His eyes drifted towards where Rand had been standing. There was almost nothing left that resembled him. What remained lay motionless among the scorched earth, burned beyond recognition by the torrent of raw Essence Isaiah had unleashed.
Michael stared for a moment before turning towards Casper's last known position.
Empty.
Casper was gone.
He must have taken the first opportunity to run. Michael couldn't blame him.
Michael's attention returned to Isaiah.
Across the ruined clearing, Isaiah had reached the tree where Babel remained embedded. He wrapped his fingers around the transparent sword's hilt and pulled it free. The blade slid from the trunk with little resistance.
Isaiah rested Babel against his shoulder and looked towards Michael.
Isaiah glanced around at what remained of the forest. The battlefield hardly resembled the place where their fight had begun. Trees had been uprooted, enormous sections of earth had collapsed, and two separate trenches carved by concentrated Essence stretched through the woodland.
"You know," Isaiah said, turning back to him, "if it makes you feel any better, you guys did a lot better than I thought you would."
Michael's expression remained unchanged.
"It's been a while since I got my ass kicked."
"You didn't try at all," Michael replied.
Isaiah's smile faded slightly.
Michael took a slow step forward. "You could've ended this whenever you wanted."
"Why didn't you?"
Isaiah didn't answer immediately.
It seemed his actions throughout the fight had not gone unnoticed. Michael's observations were accurate, perhaps more accurate than Isaiah had expected. He had conserved his Essence. He hadn't activated God's Eyes. Even after Babel had been knocked away, retrieving it had never become an urgent concern.
Michael deserved an honest answer.
Isaiah looked at Babel for a moment, considering how best to explain it.
"Well..." He rested the sword across his shoulder again. "When we were children and someone gave us a new toy, we wanted to play with it for as long as possible, right?"
Michael's expression hardened.
Isaiah continued, seemingly oblivious to it.
"You wouldn't immediately smash it against the floor. You wouldn't deliberately break it the first chance you got. You'd be careful with it." A faint smile returned to his face. "You'd do everything you could to keep it from breaking because once it broke, you couldn't play with it anymore."
Isaiah had meant it as an explanation, but Michael heard something else entirely.
"So that's what we were to you?"
Isaiah tilted his head. "Huh?"
"Toys."
"Michael, I don't think you're—"
"I don't give a fuck what you think anymore."
The words came out flat. Controlled. But something underneath them had begun to crack.
"You asked me why I was willing to go this far over this fight. I told you it was because of Kai."
Michael's hands were steady. His breathing was even.
"That wasn't the whole truth."
He took another step forward.
"I'm also doing this because I hate you."
Isaiah's expression shifted.
"I hate, hate, hate, hate..."
Michael's voice didn't rise. If anything, it got quieter. More precise. Each word placed carefully, like a blade between ribs.
"I fucking hate you people."
The clearing was silent.
"But the Gifted run the world, so I can't just go around declaring my hate for all of you, right? That'd be crazy. Right?!"
Michael breathed slowly through his nose, forcing himself back under control. It was almost instinctive. He'd done it so many times before that he barely had to think about it anymore.
"So I learned to tolerate you. Work with you. Help you. Save you. Smile at you."
He looked down for a moment.
"After a while, you get so good at suppressing something that you almost forget it's there."
He raised his head.
"I didn't do all that just to get called a fucking toy."
Michael had spent years drawing a line between what he felt and what he allowed himself to do.
For the first time in a long time, he didn't want that line.
All he wanted now was to kill Isaiah.
The thought came with such clarity that Michael's breath caught.
His Curse answered immediately.
Curse Energy surged through his body cold and sharp, like ice water flooding his veins. His vision sharpened and His heartbeat slowed.
He knew what this was.
Every Cursed did.
Michael had manifested a Dark Desire.