Stormblade 4 C55: Blackout (3)

55 - Blackout (3)

My mountain vanished.

The desert disappeared all around me.

And I found myself high above the world. A single gunmetal-gray spire reached up into the sun-filled sky from below, piercing the fluffy white clouds like a vicious, sinister-looking saber’s tip.

The Stormsteel Core had awoken.

It hadn’t awakened since I’d merged my skills with Ellen’s at the beginning of our Dual Skill Progression. Every time it had, it had been to twist and shape my skills to suit the Stormsteel Path; I had no idea what it could possibly be doing to change my S-Rank trial, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

Not that it mattered. In that moment of hesitation, I’d realized two things.

First, that adding my Law to the Path the God of Thunder had built wasn’t the correct choice.

And second, that I’d been deviating, in one way or another, from the normal paths to power for a long time.

It had started in the shell-shocked aftermath of that first Stormbreak. I’d decided right there that I would be abandoning my Unique skill—a decision delvers rarely made. It had been too dangerous for a fresh E-Ranker to handle. But even that deviation had only led me to another. Instead of simply never using it, or merging it as quickly as possible so I could get into the fighting and earn both ranks and a living, I’d poured myself into researching a build that would accomplish all of my goals—the five-merge build. I’d built something new. Something that suited me, not something that fit into what the GC’s archives knew about delving.

Even the Stormsteel Core itself had been a deviation from both the typical paths to power and my intended plans.

And I’d realized one more thing.

If the Stormsteel Core wanted deviations, I had one more I could take.

Through rage and through wrath, the storm fulfills its promises.

The Thesis of the Stormblade was untested, but it felt strong. But while it felt strong, it didn’t feel correct—not for the Stormsteel Path. That path was the God of Thunder’s, and while he hadn’t lied to me about his intentions, those intentions were unacceptable. They were a violation of the trust between master and disciple.

And I wouldn’t allow that to stand.

I would carve my own Path.

And the Stormsteel Core would help me.

◄▼►

The moment the thought crystallized, my mental world shifted again.

The portal metal spike stabbing through the cloud stayed. So did the clouds. But all around me, Stormsteel plates appeared, words crackling to life as lightning poured through fuller-like grooves in their surfaces.

Twenty-eight plates in all. Each of them hovered in the air, but only a few more than half lit up with lightning. Of the others, eight had the same grooves, but no lightning touched them, and three more had no grooves etched in their surfaces.

I read the closest of the seventeen lightning-infused plates through the clouds forming over them.

Thunder’s Wrath Finds Its Mark.

The final Law of the Thunderhead. As I read it, lightning surged between it and three others; the other Laws of the Thunderhead. It crackled and sparked around me, then arced to another Law, then another, until all seventeen of the electrified plates were connected in a winding path around me, ending at the last Law of the Thunderhead. Ozone assaulted my nose, and I couldn’t hear the wind over the sound of arcing electricity.

I hovered at the end of the Stormsteel Path itself—or at least, at the end of the parts I’d walked.

In contrast with the Path I’d followed, the other Stormsteel plates were dull and unfocused. They drifted slowly around the formation, almost seeming like they were looking for a place on the Path.  Not one of them sparked with electricity.

But even as I contemplated them, a sense of wrongness filled me. Every one of those inert Laws forged into the Stormsteel plates represented not a choice I’d made, but a choice I hadn’t. They represented the remainder of the Stormsteel Path—but that wouldn’t be my Path. My Path would be different. It already was different. It had deviated eight times so far—eight Laws away from the Stormsteel Path. As I pointed Nimbus Edge at each of the inert, carved plates, they ceased hovering and fell back through the clouds toward the ground below.

When the sky was cleared of Laws I’d chosen not to learn, I confronted the three completely blank plates. If the eight were Laws I hadn’t learned, those three were Laws I still could comprehend. I stared at them. One felt like it could still be part of my new Path, even though it matched the Stormsteel Path’s patterns. The final law of the Unbroken Storm, perhaps? But the other two were useless to me.

I let them join the other eight in their descent through the clouds.

I’d deviated eight times, though—and every one of those eight Laws would have to be added to my new Path. And to do that, the pattern would have to change. It couldn’t follow the swirling, maelstrom-like Stormsteel Path anymore.

Instead, it would be a two-fold Path—first, the promise of a sharp blade in hand, and second, the fury of the storm behind it.

The four Laws of Stormsteel formed the core of the blade, one after another. Lightning surged between the plates as I aligned them, then snuffed out. That was fine, though. All four panels hung in the air, a dozen feet between each, perfectly in line to form the shape of a thin, sharp sword. Then, as they finished aligning, I brought the four Laws of the Thunderhead forward. Each of these new panels snapped in two, the metal falling away to join the others on the ground.

But the words remained. They surged between the four Laws of Stormsteel, binding them together more strongly than the Stormsteel Path’s lightning had. In the distance, the wind began howling, a massive tornado wall rising up all around me from the clouds below. I ignored it.

There would be time for the Cyclone later. First came the Laws of the Clouded Eye. Their steel warped and flowed as my will shaped them into an ever-flowing hilt of lightning and rainwater, then a grip below it.

A moment later, the sword’s shape was complete. The storm’s promise, or my new Path’s representation of it, was complete.

But the time for wrath and rage was upon my new Path.

The tornado wall around me closed in, and I let it until it howled only feet from the nascent Path I’d walked. Then I forced its bone-stripping winds to halt their advance and threw the Laws of the Sirocco into them. Lightning arced all around the cyclone as it met its Law and was conquered by it, but when the wind faded, that lightning remained, a vortex of swirling energy that arced all around me without ever touching the blade—or the remaining Laws.

Before I could do it myself, the Law of the Godray shifted. Its metal began to swirl in the opposite direction of the Laws of the Sirocco. It spun around and around the blade, then kissed its point and vanished. As it did, darkness poured along the single spiral of electricity, filling in the gaps in its path. The Laws of the Stormlight.

Cheddar had done his part to walk this Path, too, after all.

And that left only the Hungering Abyss and the Unbroken Storm.

The Unbroken Storm was simple. It wanted to be Stormbreak, and all I had to do was allow it to exist. The moment I did, a seven-petaled flower of pure electricity blossomed high above the sword shape. It bloomed in an instant, blotting out the sun with the sheer brightness of its light. Then it faded as its energy connected to the Path.

And as for the Hungering Abyss—the portion of the Path that I’d share with Ellen?

It wrapped around the grip, then flowed up the blade’s fuller until it touched the Laws of the Stormlight.

A long, pregnant pause followed. Every one of the twenty-five Laws I’d learned so far was part of the new Path. But it wasn’t complete. Not yet.

It needed one more thing. A representation of itself. The Stormsteel Core, after all, was my representation of the Stormsteel Path, but just as this new Path was a different shape than the old, so must its representation be different as well.

The solution was obvious. Where the Path defined by Stormsteel had, at its heart, a core, my new Path would have a blade.

The promise of the blade. The rage of the storm.

I drew Nimbus Edge and, in one motion, threw the cloud-shrouded sword into the lightning-forged manifestation of my new Path. Thunder boomed. Lightning seared lines across my vision. The wind howled, and the rain battered me from every direction. The storm raged on and on for what felt like an eternity.

And when it was finished, both swords—the one I’d fought with, and the one I’d forged—were gone, and a single-edged blade hung mid-air.

Its blade was every bit the match of the spire piercing the clouds directly below it. Lightning cracked along its edge, and it was incredibly light. I’d never wielded a blade that felt less like steel in my life. Its basket hilt flowed around my hand like water; whenever I moved my wrist, the liquid lightning around it changed slightly, wrapping my hand in all directions no matter what I did. When I swung the blade, pressure built behind it, as if the very wind pushed it forward.

It was perfect.

The Storm’s Blade
S-Rank
Summonable, Pathblade

But there was more. This wasn’t over. Not yet. I could feel that in my core.

◄▼►

I opened my eyes.

S-Rank was so close I could taste it. The Storm’s Blade was forged.

The Path I’d created would work. I could feel it. My deviations had blazed it, and I’d followed it to its current end.

But something was missing—something I hadn’t realized would be essential, but that had been given to me, almost like a gift.

A world.

Tanat was gone. I had no idea when she’d left, but she’d taken the portal world’s final boss core with her. Even as I sat, cross-legged, in the boss’s room, the timer ticked down, bringing the Solo Portal closer and closer to collapse with each moment. But it didn’t have to be that way—and, in fact, I couldn’t allow it.

Around me, a dozen lightning generators hissed and popped as energy poured from one portal metal coil to another. The electrical arcs lit up the room with a faint strobing pulse. Together, Tanat and I had climbed the Dark Citadel’s tower, slain its monsters, and conquered its dangers. Now, there was only one living being in the entire lightning rod-shaped tower.

Me.

An A-Rank—soon to be S-Rank—Paragon. The imminent forebearer of a Path of my own. The moment I finished the push to S-Rank, I’d take my place at the table, playing the same game of ascension as the Crone, the Placid King, and the God of Thunder.

And if I wanted to survive that game long enough to keep my promises to Ellen, Jessie, and Eugene himself—even if he didn’t know that I’d made him one—I’d need to play by their rules.

I summoned the Stormkin Avatar, my aura pushing out unopposed through what Tanat had called the Black Tower. And as I did, the lightning generators stopped vomiting yellow-white lightning and shifted to the familiar, blue-white electricity that filled my core.

The process took minutes—minutes I didn’t have. Now that I’d finished forging my new Law and Path, every second between S-Rank and me was a second I couldn’t afford to waste. Sarah, Nathan, and the others were still fighting for their lives in a portal world that was under attack by the Placid King’s forces. I needed to re-enter that world and throw my weight into their assault on the Craftsman.

But more than that, I needed to claim this portal world as my own—and as the home of my Path.

So, as my Mana plunged, the shade of my stepfather and I slowly conquered the Black Tower. Portal metal heated, melted, and reformed, not as Stormsteel, but s something different. Lightning surged through the metal itself, blue-white sparks leaping from wall to wall. The hundreds of traps Tanat and I had encountered were overloaded, their Scripts and Bindings powerless before me. Darkness crept into the corners of every room, and I let it, even as electrical arcs threw blue-white light across the ceilings.

The tower became mine, bit by bit, and when my aura finally hit the stairs and poured out onto the streets, every lightning rod in the Dark Citadel portal world fell under my control, too.

The Solo Portal ceased to be a Dark Citadel world, and it became my own.

Then, and only then, did I withdraw the Stormkin Avatar.

I stood and took four steps toward the flight of stairs leading down. The return portal to the Carlsbad Portal was at the base of the stairs, and it was—

Power hit me.

Power overwhelming.

I collapsed. Never, ever, had so much power surged through my body. My body and mind stopped working, and all that remained was my will.

I fought for minutes. For days. Time didn’t matter. Sarah and the S-Rankers didn’t matter. Even Ellen and my sister ceased to be important. All that mattered was the sheer power—the power, and taming it.

When I finally did, I pushed myself to my feet. There was no pain. No exhaustion. Nothing but power.

The power of the sword.

The power of the storm.

The power of S-Rank.

Law Forged: Law of the Stormblade
Rank Increased: Rank A to Rank S

The first to walk a new Path must blaze that trail for all who follow, Kade Noelstra. The Law of the Stormblade’s truths have been measured, and they have been found worthy. The storm’s fury and the sword’s purpose are one, and together, they demand a promise.

The new Law you have created, and the decisions you have made to prove it, both mark an irreconcilable deviation from the Stormsteel Path. Your strength grows, and your skill advances.

Rank S Effects:
1. Your Mana and Stamina caps have been removed.

Path Effects:
1. Your skills evolve at S-Rank.