I glanced at the fox on my shoulder and sent my intent towards it through our bond: "You should stay behind; things would get rough."
But the fox shook its small head, "No, I help."
I cocked my head to the side. "And how are you planning on helping me?"
The fox looked at me, and I swore that it smiled, and from the other end of the hall, the loud voice of my sister sounded, "Up, up, you lazy curs! How long are you going to be sitting on your asses?"
I blinked in astonishment as the hall below me erupted. Knowing I could not waste this chance, I muttered to the fox, "We would talk about the sort of language you are using after this." Then I let myself fall from the hovering blade.
As I fell, I switched over to my legendary title, Storm Bearer, and in that instant, I understood what it meant to become lightning.
Lightning Incarnate was a charged shot, like an arrow that wanted to move, that needed a direction, like a line drawn fast between two points. I could not just become Lightning Incarnate and stand in place, as it went against everything that this skill was meant for.
I had always thought that this was what lightning was meant to be, an energy that could not be shackled, and had to be sent out into the world to be used... I was wrong and right at the same time.
It turns out that there are many faces of lightning, and Storm Bearer showed me a new one. Storm Bearer made me the place lightning wanted to be.
As I took upon myself this Legendary Title, my edges went soft and then went away, and I stopped being a boy falling into a hall filled with flustered mages, and time seemed to stand still, as I became the low ground of the whole room, and every loose volt in the charged air stopped being the air’s and started falling toward me like rain falls to the earth, pulled by gravity... the way everything falls toward the bottom of things.
I did not reach for lightning; now I only had to want it, and the lightning was already there, pouring through me on its way to wherever I decided it should go, and the terrible part, the part that felt like the Avatar’s cold hand closing over my own, was how easy it was.
How badly the open thing in me wanted to stay open. How little there was, in that first instant, to remind me to ever close again. I realized the danger of this title that the Hollow Avatar did not understand, and that was if I stayed in this state long enough, I would not want to go back... why should I?
The disguise of my flesh dissolves, and four colors of lightnings flood out of my body, and the hall lights like a sun through a crack, hard shadows leaping off the gold so the carved demons on the walls seem to writhe.
What amazed me was the Moon Fox; it was not affected by my lightning, and as I descended, I could see the feral glint in its eyes.
∞
The lightning essence in the hall, thin as it is this deep in the earth, stops being the air’s and becomes mine. I understood that I was now a source, and I only have to want, and the lightning is already there.
With the distraction created by the fox, I had the advantage of surprise as I dropped down from above, but as I became a Storm Source, my body lit up like the sun, and for the mages below, it was too late to stop me.
As a Storm Source, I did not need a spell; all the lightning essence in the air was packed into my channels. In addition, all my channels were filled with Anima, a single thought transformed all that Anima into lightning, and what erupted from my body in midair was what I could only describe as a Lightning bomb.
"BOOM!!!"
Moving faster than sound, a heavy discharge of lightning burst out from me in every direction at once across the seated rings, and the hundreds of masked mages had a quarter-second, maybe less, to react, but it did not do them any good.
The storm took them, robes flared, masks cracked and blackened, and whatever defenses they had in place were shattered, and what followed was their death, which came far quicker than they deserved.
For a moment, there was nothing but white and the roar of the storm as if the world was ending. This hall was made from materials that were extremely durable, but even the floors and walls began to redden from the heat.
I could feel hundreds of souls blinking out in less than a second, and my lightning burned those souls to ash before their corrupted presence could rise more than a foot into the air.
However, I could feel five presences underneath me like black holes, and as I slowly floated down, I roared in anger, and the sound that came from my mouth was the lightning itself crying out.
In that instant, the massive wave of lightning that had been spreading around the hall shrank down to a pillar that was so thick it almost seemed to be carved out of shining blue alabaster.
This pillar of lightning fell on the five blackholes beneath me, and for a second it seemed not to do anything, before a massive lightning explosion, blasted the five Arcanist from their positions, picking them up and slamming them into the walls of the halls, one of them was even blasted towards the darkness of the distant ceiling above, rising like a star until he slammed into a metallic barrier.
My feet touched the ground, and my body took back its fleshy form, but I was glowing with so much power, it was hard to say if I was lightning or man.
My eyes tracked all five Arcanists that had been thrown by the explosion, and I picked my first target, the familiar Arcanist with his iron grey beard. He had been slammed to the far wall on my left, and he was on one knee, while his body was covered with lightning that seemed to be alive as they tried to burrow into his skin.
I became Lightning Incarnate as I charged towards him.