I have used Lightning Tribunal a hundred times. I have thrown it from my hands, in the form of a golden bolt, but this was using a fraction of this power. Perhaps my channels could take more punishment, but my soul could not.
Spells, you see, have a weight to them; they are the expression of our souls, and when your soul carries the tribulations from the heavens, that was the sort of weight that could break any mind.
However, this power had been granted to me when I stood before the heavens and told them that I was ready to pay the price to hold this golden lightning, and every time I held back, I had always felt some part of me was waiting, that part I did not call, and it was hungry to see what this spell could really do if I went all out.
I call it now, all of it. I reach past the cage I had built around this spell, and I summon the true form, and the true form of Lightning Tribunal is a thing that judges.
If the heavens are blind... then let me be the heavens.
My understanding of Tribulation lightning was simple, I saw it as the fire the heavens use to test a soul, to ask, when a mage climbs too high too fast, whether the soul that climbed deserves to keep climbing or should be burned out of the world for its presumption.
That was the path of the heavens, but I was different. Maybe the heavens saw things from a grander perspective, but my feet were locked to the earth, and I could see all the madness that went under the gaze of the unfeeling heavens... I could see that some bastards needed to be judged, and the heavens’ attention was elsewhere.
I have always aimed this golden bolt at my enemies, but I had never placed the conviction of judgement inside this spell, because a part of me believed it was not in my power to judge others. I mean, I was sixteen; how much of life have I seen to begin judging the actions of others?
Still, there was right, and there was wrong, and age did not mean that that distinction could not be observed.
I called the lightning, but because I was blind, the hall was bright with the power of the Arnean Formation; I directed that judgment towards the only thing I could still feel... me.
For a moment, I felt my spell stall, as if the pyramid and the formation were holding it back, but I had so much Anima inside me to give, and I gave the spell all of it.
"Come, judge me, and tell me... Am I worthy?!"
With a resounding crack that I was sure would be heard for miles around the Caelith Mourne pyramid, the heavens open above the Arnean Formation, past the stretched space, past the giant Arcanists, past the pyramid’s thirty kilometers of black metal as though it were not there, and a massive cloud appeared above the pyramid that folded until it took the shape of a gigantic eye with a single glowing cross in the middle.
How do I know all these things? Well, my perception was part of the eye, and yet I no longer controlled it, as if some portion of the heavens above had seized it; until the power within it was exhausted, I would not be able to control it. If the power I pushed inside this spear was considered to be one, then when the consciousness of the heavens seized it, the power climbed to a hundred.
I could barely see the camp on the eastern side of the pyramid that had been crushed to the ground, and that was all I could observe before a massive golden spear descended from the eye, releasing a powerful shockwave that tore the skies apart, and sent a massive wind that swept the camp away as if it were feathers.
The lightning spear seemed real and unreal at the same time as it descended through the pyramid, and for a moment, I thought I felt the Jade Oracle staring at the lightning spear with astonishment, even though I knew she did not even have a head.
Then, faster than my thoughts could process, the lightning spear struck my bound form in the center of the formation.
∞
Judgement had come for me, and yet the Arcanists die first, and they die screaming.
The Arnean Formation suppresses my Celestial side, but it is a thing of transformed Anima, occult and human, and tribulation lightning is the heavens’ answer to all things.
It came to judge me, and the chains of this formation stopped it from reaching me, and the golden lightning roared as it climbed up the chains towards the wielders of the formation and found the four Arcanists.
They released the chains in panic, but it was too late; the entire formation itself was made from the Anima of all four Arcanists, and these were their souls, for the golden lightning, this was a medium it could use to travel, and it punished the Arcanists because they had inadvertently prevented the lightning from reaching me.
I feel them try to shield against the lightning, and I did not think that there were enough shields in the world to stop this tribulation. The heavens have decided they climbed too high, because they were stopping it from judging me, and the heavens would shift that judgement to them, and it would ask... who are you to stand before my judgement?
The Arcanist failed to give a proper answer to this question, and for that, they burned.
Three of them come apart where they stand, their gigantic bodies crumbled, the stretched space of the formation snapping back as the wills holding it are burned out of their bodies. The chains in their hands, covered by golden lightning, go slack and fall, body-sized links crashing down to the ground of a hall that is rushing back to its true size around me.
The last Arcanist was stronger than the three, because although he was covered by lightning, he was able to flee while screaming in pain and fear, but he could not go far before he collapsed, and he began to crawl forward, while leaving burning bits of his body behind.
With all four Arcanists dead and dying, and the chains shattered, more than half the power of the lightning had vanished, but there was still more than enough for it to judge me.