Kess curled up on the couch in her room later that week, listening to the fire crackle and the Lightstorm buzz outside. Soon it would sweep through the city with enough wrath to burn down buildings that weren’t properly guarded against its fury. Chiefly, though, it would mean Kess would be all too aware of what she kept locked away, deep inside. Keeping it pushed down would get harder without the fights to temper her, and the Lightstorm would make that even more difficult.
It was well into morning, and yet no knock had come at her door. Kess was hungry, but the idea of facing Rowan after her outburst on the roof made her stomach twist. Rowan had been cruel, but Kess had done no better—she’d been avoiding the man since, training be damned.
There was just something about him that put her on edge. Not just his love for and interest in Fulminancy, but his stubborn ability to be so clouding…positive, even with his failed lights and blown workshop. It was maddening, and yet she’d promised Draven she would work on her powers. That, unfortunately, required that she work with Rowan, at least a little bit. She turned Draven’s ring in her hand, watching the firelight reflect off the opal. She closed her eyes, trying to picture her Fulminancy bending to her will—acting as an ally instead of an enemy. Darkness met her. How in Faleas’s gray skies am I going to do this without blowing the building to bits?
Kess tried to think back to a time when she hadn’t been panicked or running for her life when using her powers. There was nothing. Without fail, her powers were something she reached for when things became so desperate that her very life was on the line. And why wouldn’t it be that way? Why would she reach for her powers casually when the results had been disastrous before? They were a fuse to a bomb, and the only way she’d managed to survive for so long was to shove them down to a place so deep she could barely acknowledge them.
Now that she’d released them, however, she knew she’d have to do something about them. With each day that passed, Kess found that tingle of her powers closer and closer to the surface. How long until she slipped, and something blew? How long until she woke up in the middle of the night, surrounded by a storm of her own making, unable to stop the destruction it wrought?
Kess watched tendrils of lightning creep across the tapestry of the sky outside, then disappear. For all that Lightstorms made her jumpy, they also had a strange way of relaxing her. When that lightning came down to twine around her, she felt at peace. She shook her head. It made little sense, but perhaps there was a way to simulate that bond with the storm—a way to make an ally of Fulminancy. It sounded ridiculous, really. How was one to make an ally of something so inherently destructive?
But she would try, though the very idea nauseated her and set her on edge. She turned Draven’s ring in the firelight, and the opal sparkled there, shimmering faintly with a tapestry of colors. She would try, if nothing else, because she’d promised Draven. That promise, at least, she would keep.
Kess made her way through the manor, dodging groups of people along the way. She didn’t recognize any of them, but the manor was a big place, and Kess had mostly kept to herself for the past month. Most of them were in high spirits, even if they were hired help. Kess would give Arlette that, at least—her people were well cared for.
Rowan and his friend Eamon were nowhere to be found, which Kess was grateful for. Having Rowan loom over her was not something she wanted, and while Eamon was a nice enough man, Kess wanted solitude for what she was about to do.
She peeked her head into the training warehouse and sighed in relief as she found it empty and dim. Then, something occurred to her—she stopped a kitchen woman and asked her to make sure that no one was in the attached kitchen warehouse. The woman seemed confused, but nodded—it was between mealtimes, anyway.
That done, Kess shut the door to the dim warehouse and found herself alone again. Boxes cluttered a few areas around the room, but most of it was kept empty for sparring practice and new deliveries. There was plenty of space to practice without worrying about bystanders, though Kess could do little for the building itself if something went wrong. Kess heaved a sigh and walked to a set of boxes in the middle of the room, resigned.
There, she lit a single lantern. It wasn’t exactly dark in the warehouse, but its few windows were set high in the wall above, and while they occasionally flashed with the Lightstorm, the sky was gray and dull. The lantern cast strange shapes around the room, warping and twisting her shape as it met the shadows of the equipment in the room. Her shadow stared at her, a grim reminder of what she now faced. Kess set her jaw and blinked at the darkness, bringing her palm up.
It felt strange not to make a fist, but she didn’t want destruction here—she wanted to take the feral beast that was her Fulminancy and tame it. Is Fulminancy the beast? A tiny voice whispered inside of her head. Or is it you?
Kess’s hand shook slightly and the lightning outside retreated, leaving gray skies in its wake. Without the flashing, Kess stood in darkness save for the lantern, her mouth dry as paper. But Kess didn’t see the darkness. Kess didn’t see the retreating Lightstorm. Kess saw herself crouched there, younger, bloody and broken, her Fulminancy crackling around her like a snarling fiend, her eyes unsteady and filled with tears. She shook her head and tried to blink it away, but the vision stayed with her, a visceral reminder of what she now tampered with.
I couldn’t stop it, she thought, fighting back tears. What went wrong? That small figure got to her feet, lightning crackling around her, a veritable storm on her own. The problem wasn’t with her Fulminancy at all.
The figure locked eyes with her, blue and glowing against the distant light of the lantern, a power building up within that she could neither contain nor deny. And Kess realized that far from locking this power away, she had let it consume and destroy her already. No, the problem wasn’t with Fulminancy at all.
The problem was with her.
“I’m a monster,” she whispered.
The figure struck.
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Kess knew on some level that it wasn’t real, but she willed her Fulminancy into her limbs anyway, using that sick feeling of fear and nausea to push herself to the brink. Her Fulminancy didn’t understand that she wasn’t really at risk. It didn’t understand that she viewed it as the risk—so it sprang into her hands, an unwieldy and buzzing force, growing into a crackling swirl she could barely see, let alone control.
Desperately, Kess fought to release it, though it stuck to her like tar. She shook her hands and planted her feet. Panicking, she finally wrenched it free to send it soaring into a metal rack across the room.
Kess’s feet left the ground. She cracked into the wall and the room went dark. Kess came to with a groan. The lantern flickered innocently in the middle of the room, and Kess’s younger self and her Fulminancy were both gone, replaced with the mundane warehouse. Wincing, Kess got to her feet and limped over to the storage rack. The metal glowed and twisted where her Fulminancy had hit, though mercifully, nothing occupied the racks to further distort the metal.
A metal pole near the racks had fared much better, absorbing her impact with few visible repercussions. Kess put her hand to the pillar and hissed, drawing it back as the metal tried to sear her skin. She picked up a practice sword instead and slammed it into the pole with a clang. The pole held, and Kess decided it would be good enough. She’d been lucky to avoid blowing the warehouse to pieces in the first place.
Kess returned to the center of the room and built up that mass of energy, shaking, sweating, and nauseated. She released it and plowed into the wall again. As the room grew dark and the afternoon wore on, Kess lost track of everything but that crackling energy. The Lightstorm returned, singing overhead as Kess crashed into the wall, slid across the floor, and was knocked silly by her own powers. She had no idea what to do or how to do it, but she’d broken enough promises lately—she wouldn’t break this one.
Far from becoming natural as she worked, her Fulminancy left her nauseated and frustrated, as if each time she reached into that well of power she became something worse. And, perhaps I am, she thought as she got to her shaking legs, stumbling back to the center of the room. This power corrupts everyone. Why would I be an exception?
Even so, she kept at it. Kess was not one for subtlety, but if she could fight this power and master it, then at least she would be a monster with a leash.
It was better than one left to roam.
Hours later, or so she thought, Kess fought her way back to her feet after a particularly nasty blast of energy sent her flying. There was still no consistency in what she did, and if anything, she felt she’d gotten worse as the day wore on. Her hair curled slightly with sweat, and her back was damp with it, though that was the least of her problems; her bruises from the day before were a distant memory, replaced with the bone deep ache of exhaustion and the sharp pain of several other injuries as her body protested its treatment.
That pain would fade, but Kess didn’t know what to do with the other pain.
She felt it deep within, like her very spirit rebelled against this foreign magic—a nausea and sickness that left her weak and disgusted with herself as she fought back the memory of that night so long ago. Kess stood shakily in the center of the room and closed her eyes. I’ll never be free of it, she thought. No amount of practicing will take away what happened that night.
She raised her arm—heavy with exhaustion—and willed her Fulminancy into it again.
Nothing happened.
She tried again and felt no answering crackle. Kess nearly topped to the floor with relief. It was…gone. That well of power still slumbered, but quietly, its crackling energy now a quiet hum.
Kess desperately wanted to sleep, but instead wandered over to the weapons rack on shaking legs. She could barely stand, but using her Fulminancy like a weapon left her disgusted, like she was an animal rolling in the dead of a battlefield. She chose a hardwood staff from the rack and stumbled back towards the center of the room.
Where the sword and Fulminancy alike felt foreign and unwieldy in her hands, the staff felt like home. She twirled it a few times, swearing as she slammed it into her head while she figured out the rhythm again, then picked up speed as the wood warmed beneath her hands, a solid presence against the whirlwind and chaos that was her Fulminancy. The strikes came naturally—an extension of her punches in the arena with a few adjustments of the wrist. The room faded away, and she was in another time, another place.
A happier time.
She lost herself in the flow of that staff, returning to herself with each swing, the staff a cleansing balm for her spirit. A voice rang out in the warehouse, startling Kess out of her rhythm, and the staff clattered to the floor.
“You’re quite good at that for someone who uses her fists for a living,” Rowan said, shutting the door. Kess collected the staff from the floor, blushing furiously as he walked further into the room. “Clouds, Kess, how long have you been in here?” Kess shelved the staff and looked at him blearily.
“Since lunch,” she said. Only now did she understand the full extent of her exhaustion. She slumped down against one of the barrels of weapons, closing her eyes. “I couldn’t find anyone, so I came down here to work on it myself.”
“Kess, that’s all well and good, but Eamon and I don’t usually train today.” Footsteps padded over to her, and Rowan crouched before her, his eyes concerned. Maybe he was frustrating, but Kess wasn’t entirely ready to write him off as just another fool—he seemed decent enough. “You can’t use it all at once like that,” he said, looking her over. “You’ll give yourself burnout.”
“I know,” she said quietly. Kess was, unfortunately, well aware of what happened when too much of her Fulminancy was used. It was a side effect of not being able to control her powers, then being forced to use them anyway.
“’I know’?” Rowan repeated, shaking his head. “Kess, you’ll kill yourself.” He put a hand to her forehead and swore. Kess’s breath caught at his touch, but she looked away, trying to hide her expression. I really need to stay as far away as possible from Rowan, she thought. It was hard enough dealing with her own emotions—she didn’t need to deal with the push and pull of Rowan’s nonsense on top of it. “Did you eat anything?” he finally asked after watching her for a moment. Kess just shook her head. He sighed and moved towards the door, clearly expecting her to follow. “Food will help with the headache,” he said. “And lots of sleep tonight, though I’m sure you’ll have no problems with that after we get something into you.”
“Rowan—“ He was nearly to the door, but Kess didn’t move.
“I have to admit I admire your dedication, but Fulminancy isn’t supposed to be wielded like a blunt force object. Clouds, you could have blown the entire roof off.”
“Rowan—“ Kess watched his back as he walked across the warehouse, but her voice wasn’t loud enough to get his attention, and he continued with his tirade.
“At least let someone who knows what they’re doing help you next time. When I said I’d like to teach you, I didn’t mean to turn you loose in the warehouse. If you’d like, we can—“
“Rowan!”
He stopped and turned around. He seemed surprised to see Kess still sitting there, and something like understanding settled into his face. “Fanas and Faleas,” he swore softly. “You can’t move, can you?”
Kess just smiled sheepishly at him with a little half shrug. Rowan pressed his fingertips into his temples and came back to collect her. Kess was embarrassed, but well, maybe she’d earned a bit of help from others, just this once.
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