Stormblade 4 C53: Blackout (1)

53 - Blackout (1)

Whether Tanat left or not, I couldn’t say, because when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in the Solo Portal anymore.

One look at the spire of stone that had once been my mountain, though, and it was obvious that I wouldn’t be returning here. I’d either take my next step or I wouldn’t, but this would be the last time I set foot in this mental space.

So, for a moment, I stared out at the desert as the sun rose on the eastern skyline. The morning pinks and oranges played with the shadows of palo verde trees and saguaro cacti, and a few birds flitted in the scrub that dotted the desert sand. Black stone was already heating up, even this early, and heat ripples rose over the mountains around me.

It was a calm, beautiful morning. No storms appeared on the horizon. No wind pushed against my skin. The arroyos were empty and dry.

There wouldn’t be a storm here. Not today.

The only thing that could change that was me.

I pulled up my status.

User: Kade Noelstra
Reforged Core, A-Rank
Stamina: 145/500, Mana: 497/630

Skills: 
1. Stormsteel Core (A-09 to A-10, Unique, Merged, God-Touched)
2. Thunderbolt Forms (A-08 to A-10, Altered, Merged)
3. Mistwalk Forms (A-09 to A-10, Altered, Merged)
4. Cyclone Forms (A-07 to A-10, Altered, Merged)
5. Stormlight Bond (B-10, Altered, Merged)
6. Shadowstorm Battery (C-10, Altered, Merged, Dual)
7. Stormbreak (B-04 to B-08, Unique)

My skills were ready for the push. S-Rankers only needed three—in fact, most builds could only support three S-Rank skills. Mine could do better than that. With enough time and effort, I could have pushed Stormbreak to A-10, and with Ellen’s help, Shadowstorm Battery could have made it, too. But I hadn’t had the time, I’d been afraid of Stormbreak, and Ellen was both not here and not in shape to keep pushing her core.

I set those two skills aside, then pondered Stormlight Bond. It was at B-10, and I didn’t see a good way to move it forward with my current power level. Cheddar was a valuable ally, but even as a monstrous familiar, his power had capped off. I set it aside as well.

That left four skills. Stormsteel Core, Thunderbolt Forms, Mistwalk Forms, and Cyclone Forms were the core of my build. They informed my fighting style more than anything else I did, and they’d be at the core of whatever Law I managed to learn.

Cyclone Forms was currently capped at A-10, though. Unless S-Rank changed things, it had reached its maximum potential during our Solo Portal clear. I’d have to make do with the other three.

The Laws of Stormsteel stated that destruction was protection, no shelter could withstand the storm, fury could not be contained, and that the storm destroyed and protected. It was a skill devoted to my armor, my weapon, and most importantly, the core that even now lay still and dormant around my mental space.

It had also been the beginning of my journey. Stormbreak had been a dead end—or at least it had felt that way at the time—and without the Stormsteel Core, I’d have been stuck with a skill that felt too dangerous to use. The Laws of Stormsteel and their associated skill had been the catalyst for everything I’d become, all the way from E-Rank.

The Laws of the Thunderhead governed my most aggressive swordplay. They were, in order, that control was chaos, that chaos was predictable, that the storm’s reach was everywhere, and that thunder’s wrath always found its mark. As I pondered the collected Laws of the Thunderhead, a rumbling filled the sky, but no clouds appeared, and no shadows fell on my mountain or on the desert below.

I’d slowly gained that control, forging the chaos of the storm into a fighting style that cut through armor and cleared rooms. My blade—whether Tallas’s Dueling Blade or Nimbus Edge—was an extension of my arm now; I knew where it was, and no enemy was safe from it for long.

If the Laws of the Thunderhead were my aggression, the Laws of the Clouded Eye represented the storm inside of me’s resiliency. They were a loop: protection begets deception, deception begets aggression, and aggression begets protection. With all three Laws in place, the final Law of the Clouded Eye stated simply that the rain flows.

While Thunderbolt Forms was a powerful offensive engine, I found myself in Mistwalk Forms more frequently than I’d expected. The defensive stance flowed better than any of the others, and against some of the powerful enemies I’d been fighting, I couldn’t leave myself open. More importantly, it didn’t just flow on its own. It made the rest of my style more deadly, too. Mistwalk led to some of the most powerful of Thunderbolt’s attacks, and those in turn flowed into Cyclone Forms. The rain did, in fact, flow.

But it wasn’t falling yet. I braced myself, expecting the heavens to open and a downpour to begin. Nothing. This process clearly wouldn’t react until I tried something new.

That left only one set of Laws: The Laws of the Sirocco. The gigantic, desert-sweeping windstorms were shockingly powerful, and so was the magic it governed. Power was patient, and that patience conquered raw strength. Restraint and action were one, just two sides of the same coin. And finally, the storm prepared.

I felt woefully unprepared. My skills didn’t feel ready, and I didn’t have a statement that felt right for the task before me. Tanat had said that I’d just keep going regardless, and that sounded like me, but what if I didn’t know how?

But at the same time…

At the same time, this was the Path I’d been walking. The Stormsteel Path had never been easy. It had been fast, yes. I’d grown as fast or faster than any delver I’d heard of. Only Ellen had been able to keep up, and that was a testament to her willpower and determination. But we’d both pushed ourselves to the brink of losing everything following our paths.

More than that, I knew for a fact that I’d do it again.

I’d throw myself into the unknown and bash my skull against the unbeatable if it meant keeping my promises.

And that was all there was to this, really.

I settled in on my mountaintop and, for the first time, became the storm breaking over the desert.

◄▼►

My storm came slowly.

It started in my core. Lightning cracked inside of me—and all around the massive portal metal bands surrounding my mental space. The flashes were all but invisible against the morning sun; I only knew they existed because of the building tension inside of me, and because of the growing static in the air.

But the desert reacted instantly.

Those animals that could disappear into the earth did. Tunneling lizards buried themselves in the sand. Prairie dogs disappeared into their warrens. The very smallest ants turned around as one and began their march back to their hills.

Everything else ran. They ran as hard as they could, as fast as they could. But even as they ran, I knew they couldn’t possibly run far enough. The storm was coming.

Clouds came next. They poured through the portal metal bands, turning the sky gray overhead before darkening to a deep, almost black shade. The static in the air mixed with humidity, and the outpouring storm front whipped the wind into a frenzy around me.

And with that wind, finally, came the rain.

My core poured wind and rain, thunder and lightning, out into the desert around me. The morning sun fought valiantly, but it lacked the power to fight against my inner storm. Over a half-hour of effort, I choked the sky with dark clouds until only an eerie twilight covered the Sonoran Desert in my mental space. Then, and only then, did I begin to contemplate myself.

I’d first felt the storm in elementary school. The first time I’d balled my fists so tight my nails dug into my palms. The first time the battle trance had taken over. The first time I’d taken it upon myself to be an avenger, to enforce what I knew was right.

But I hadn’t known what I was feeling until years later—until two weeks after my fight with Jeff, in fact.

Oh, I’d known I wanted to help people who needed help. And the rage inside had an obvious target. The bullies had to be stopped. The teachers couldn’t do it—if they could have, they would. I didn’t blame them. They couldn’t be everywhere, and kids were sneaky. I’d been there, though. I could stop them.

So I had.

But that hadn’t meant I understood the feeling. The rage and the battle trance. Even Dad’s training had only done so much.

Until…the fight.

The kid I’d ‘saved’ from Jeff. It had been his fault. He’d been the bully, not Jeff. And I’d gotten him back for it, but unlike everyone else, he hadn’t learned his lesson. Jeff had asked me to let it go, though. He was a big guy, and his mom and dad had told him how to handle stuff like this. Plus, I was his friend. He didn’t want me to get hurt.

So I’d promised to leave Ian alone.

If Ian had made the same promise about Jeff, that would have been that. But while Jeff’s dad had told him not to take any crap, his mom had told him to just ignore bullies, and Ian kept on taking advantage of that.

When Jeff came to school with a black eye and bruised arms—obviously from blocking punches—I forgot about my promise.

And, for the first time I could remember, the storm’s wrath opened up on Ian unchecked.

It hadn’t been pretty. By the time the teachers pulled me off of him, my fingers ached, and I could taste blood from where I’d ground my teeth into my tongue. He didn’t get up until after they dragged me to the principal’s office to have a ‘chat’ with the school’s police officer. That chat had lasted close to an hour before Dad showed up, armored, covered in monster gore, and wearing his sword.

I’d been bailed out by him before, but this time…this time was different.

The room had cleared out. “I talked to Jeff, Kade. He said you promised to leave Ian alone. Did you tell him that?”

“Yes,” I’d said through gritted teeth.

“And you fought Ian anyway?”

“Yes,” I repeated.

He nodded. “Then that’s disappointing. Your friend wouldn’t have asked you to hold yourself back if he didn’t think he could handle things. And, more importantly, you shouldn’t have made that promise if you couldn’t keep it.”

We sat in silence for a minute; I watched the second hand work its way around the office clock.

“So, did I screw up?” I asked.

Dad nodded. He didn’t say anything else. But he didn’t have to.

When he left, and the principal and police officer came in, I wasn’t mad at Ian anymore. I was mad at him for leaving me behind.

But mostly, I was mad at myself.

Looking back on it, that moment had been the most important day of my life—I just hadn’t realized it at the moment. I hadn’t realized it for almost seven years. But after that moment, in the office, I’d finally started taking what Dad was trying to teach me seriously. The meditation Jessie and I did. The sparring with sword and fist against Dad. All of it had a purpose, and that purpose had to do with the rage inside of me. It wasn’t just about trying to calm the storm or about channeling it in the right way. Those were the effects of what I was doing.

But they weren’t the goal.

The goal of everything I’d done—of the training with Dad, of my need to push for strength by delving into portals, and of the Laws I’d learned, was control. Control…so I could keep my promises.

I’d failed to keep my promise to Jeff. It hadn’t hurt our friendship, but that moment was an open wound.

That day, with my knuckles bruising from my fight with Ian, had set me up for a moment, seven years later, when I stood in a bathroom and used Stormbreak as monsters broke through the door. It was about keeping promises—nothing more, and nothing less.

I refocused on the storm overhead. It boiled and churned. It was unfocused. Chaotic. It needed direction. Shape. Purpose. It needed a reason to exist—a reason to rage.

That was what the Stormsteel Path was missing. What I could contribute to it.

A reason.

The God of Thunder’s only reason for walking the Path, so far as I could see, was ascension, and gaining power for its own sake meant nothing. The storm raged, patience conquered power, and the rain flowed—but none of that gave it purpose. None of that gave the storm a reason to thunder.

Like a flash of lightning, I suddenly knew. Not the shape of the completed step on the Path. Not what it would look like when I got there, but the first part of the process to forge it.

Drawing my blade, I carved the storm into the shape of a single truth—a truth that encompassed the first four sets of Laws.

The storm inside of me rages, but I guide that rage.

It was close.

But it wasn’t complete. It had shape, yes, but that shape lacked purpose—just as I intended. It was intentionally incomplete.

I’d only used four of my sets of Laws in forming it; without the Laws of the Godray, Hungering Abyss, and Unbroken Storm, my Truth could not be forged into a Law.

Each of those Laws had inspired deviation. Each of those Laws had come from a promise. And each of those Laws, in their own way, had led me off the Stormsteel Path.

When I understood those deviations, I would understand the purpose of the Stormsteel Path, and my contribution to it would be complete.