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Loud footsteps rush up the corridor behind Sarah and Isaiah.
“I won’t be useless once we’re outside this church!” Sarah says.
“Let’s hope,” Isaiah replies. “Ready?”
“Ready!” she says.
Isaiah grabs Sarah’s shoulder and they sink into the church floor as Abraham arrives just in time to see them vanish.
Uproar and off guard gasps at a wall with a dampened apostle and a single transistor. The celestials on the right, priests on the left, doorway straight ahead. By the time Isaiah manages to get ahold of their position and focus on the outside, they’re clotheslined through the half formed transmutation circle behind them and spit out 1,000 feet in the sky a field away. The attacking celestial spreads her magnificent wings having gone through the circle herself and takes flight letting both Sarah and Isaiah flail wildly to their deaths.
Sarah and Isaiah stop falling, suspended by seemingly nothing just a few hundred feet down.
The celestial floating before them vanishes.
The sky goes red. The clouds go black.
The sound is sucked right of out the atmosphere before all the red fades and all that it left is shaded grey. The trees, the grass, the sky, the clouds, Sarah and Isaiah, all of it grey.
“Isaiah, you must leave immediately!”
“Ref, what the hell is going on?” Isaiah asks.
“Seth has spoken your name…” Ref says from within Isaiah’s mind.
“THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!” his heart races. Isaiah’s palms are instantly sweaty. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. Suspended midair, he turns to the church. Sarah visibly sees the fear crawling on the surface of Isaiah’s skin, that’s enough to send her into a panic, and to also look where he is looking.
Down at the church, ants in the distance, two dozen priests and a celestials stand around a dark figure. The other four celestial’s hover safely above.
“What’s goin’ on?” Sarah asks.
“Seth…” Isaiah replies.
Three of the priests around the figure gradually lift off the ground. They claw at their throats and kick wildly searching for the nearest breath, but they’re unable to change their circumstance.
Late reacted, every other priest and the celestials spring to help their ally. Several beams of dark purples and burgundies laser from the hands of half of the priests at Seth. The remaining priests begin to focus their holy energy for a more powerful attack. Their hands raised high above their heads collecting the natural holy energy of the universe.
“He must’ve sensed the celestials and priests gathered here.” Sarah says. “There’s too many. This isn’t good!”
“It’s not.” Isaiah says.
The priests firing the beams seem to be ineffective, doing little to no harm at all.
As if the sun itself was bursting out of Seth, his body begins to glow ever brighter. And then solar flares. And then blindness. When the light dims from his body the three priests have vanished. Body parts lay scattered around the remainders.
The priests previously firing their beams have ceased and seem to be frozen in place. The ground begins to grow below Sarah and Isaiah as they begin to fall again.
“I’m up!” Sarah says. She puts her hands in prayer pose and yells, “PROTECTION”.
Isaiah grabs ahold of Sarah, hugging her tightly as they spin out of control on their way down. A golden bubble protects the two of them as they slam right through the ground creating a small crater with the two of them safely at the center.
“The ground feels like it’s shaking!” Sarah says brushing off the skirt of her yellow polka dot dress.
“It is,” Isaiah says walking back to the church.
“Shouldn’t we be heading the other way?” She says.
“The moment the sky went dark, we were trapped in his zone. There’s nowhere to go that won’t land us right back here. Not until his zone drops,” he says.
Zones are the names of a particular type of transmutation in which the area around the transistor creating it is part of the transmutation. In the case of this transistor, Seth, the transmutation lines used manipulate his surroundings are designed in such a way where it creates a looping bubble. Like an old Mario game, if they walked away, they’d just arrive at the same spot from the other side.
“His zone connects every direction to the opposite side. We’re fucked in here,” Isaiah says.
“And if he decides to destroy the area inside the zone?” Sarah asks.
“Well, let’s try to make sure he doesn’t!” Isaiah starts jogging over to Seth, Sarah following closely.
The five remaining celestials jump into action. Three dive from the sky, one turns red on the ground, another in the sky also turns red and charge as well.
Isaiah slow as he gets closer.
Bearded, black robed and with straight frizzy hair down to his back, Seth goes pale white, with no shine. The transmutation lines on his exposed dirty hands, face and sandaled feet sparkle. Like a glitch, he’s suddenly dodged one of the celestials by simply appearing two feet to his right. And he dodges the next by doing the same to the left. And he’s managed to somehow grab the left wing of one and the right wing of the other. He tosses them far into the sky as the third makes contact. Seth is slammed right into the ground. On impact, the priests are able to move again.
The red glowing celestials grab one arm each and hold him down. Seth doesn’t struggle or speak. He just stands there, restrained.
Isaiah jumps into action, his arms glowing gold and now solid and dense. He runs right up to one of the red celestials and strikes him in the face, flat fisted and they’re knocked some feet back releasing one of Seth’s arms.
The two celestials Seth tossed into the sky head-butt Isaiah from the sky, first one, then the other. Standing up to face the two celestials he sees Sarah free Seth’s other arm and the two of them square up against all the priests and celestials.
The walls of the zone, previously appearing normal, continuing into the woods go black. A clear barrier reflecting everything before it.
“Oh shit!” Isaiah says. He sees Seth gently tap Sarah and she’s flung across the zone. With his other hand he puts the middle and index finger against his temple then aims it at a cluster of priests. A sphere forms where the priests were and grows commencing to pull nearby objects in like a tiny but powerful tornado.
The two celestial’s before Isaiah and the red one now behind him stare dumbfounded at the growing black hole formed inside Seth’s zone.
Taking the opportunity while it’s presented, Isaiah has enough time to focus, his hands down by his crotch holding a triangle formed between his fingers. A transmutation circle forms in the air in Sarah’s path and she shows up behind the red celestial behind Isaiah.
Sarah blasts a purple beam of holy energy at the celestial just as Isaiah reaches to grab the nothing before him and tears it apart as if he was opening heavy elevator doors. The two celestials before him are hit by an invisible force to either side, opening enough passage to run through. Sarah and Isaiah run over to Seth.
“I need to knock him out before he kills us all. Is it possible?” Isaiah asks Ref.
“With help from the Apostle,” he replies.
Sarah speeds up to Isaiah’s side. She’s clearly been told the same by Ref.
“Are we strong enough?” she asks as him and Isaiah prepare to defend their lives against the recklessness of the original transistor.