78. Stormfire (I)

"Elders of Mount Thundercrest! Elders of the Azure Flame Faction! It is my honor to host you today at this Joint Lecture on the Law."

Azure Flame Faction? Wasn't that the same Faction that made the Rising Sun Slash?

Elder Lucian clasped his hands behind his back.

"I have gathered you here today on Mount Taiji, under arrays of absolute secrecy, to reveal a secret that—without exaggeration—shall upend the foundations of our Factions. A breakthrough I believe will shake the Galaxy for generations to come."

Silence greeted his words. The other elders looked at one another, frowning.

"Or so you've said," growled an Elder in the middle, squat and bushy-browned. "Let it never be said Sage Noughtfire lacks for ego. You pulled me out of seclusion for this, Lucian! If you've wasted my time—"

"I assure you, Elder Rini," said Elder Lucian. His proud eyes flashed with annoyance. "You will be quite satisfied. Shall I continue?"

Elder Rini crossed his burly arms and harrumphed.

"This secret," continued Elder Lucian. "Should only be disseminated to your most promising young talents. A scant few will ever comprehend it. But those that do shall become unparalleled at their power levels. This secret shall not only strengthen them now, but also put them on the road to becoming true galactic powerhouses! Listen well!"

"You know of Stormfire, one of the greatest destructive powers in the universe. It burns what lightning could never shock and shocks what fire could never burn. The perfect fusion of two Elemental Laws—and among the most difficult to achieve. Even among you, your Factions' most venerable Elders—I would guess less than half have managed the feat."

At Elder Rini's indignant expression—"This is no insult."

He held up a hand. It was missing its ring finger and pinky. The stumps smoldered black.

"True Stormfire exacts a tremendous price. It took me six centuries of practice to achieve it. I was lucky to leave with only the permanent loss of two fingers… most pay with their lives."

The elders there shuffled uncomfortably. Murmurs scattered down the row.

"But what if," Elder Lucian continued, "It was possible to achieve Stormfire before the full mastery of Elemental Laws? A version which—while dangerous—is not tantamount to gambling with your life? A stepping stone to Stormfire, if you will?"

The murmur ceased. The elders all stared wide-eyed. "Enough!" spat Rini. "Speak!"

"Very well. I present to you… Pseudo-Stormfire!"

He opened his palm, and something new burned in the center of it. A flame that seemed to buzz, a flame that flickered not like fire but like electricity. It was still the red of fire, but where fire flickered red and yellow, this flickered red and white—a pure white, an electric white. The licks of flames seemed to crackle. They gave off sparks that sizzled and buzzed at once. A burning that shocked…

It was pale as it lay in his palm, a ghost of an element. But somehow, even dreaming, Zane felt the effects of it—the heat pouring off it which somehow tingled like electricity. It gave him a hair-raising feeling. Major Laws poured off it, so closely wound you couldn't tell them apart.

Gasps rippled down the line of elders. Even Elder Rini seemed flabbergasted.

"Indeed," said Elder Lucian dryly, "It is a shadow of Stormfire, true—but it is there. It is real."

He paused. "True Stormfire is an esoteric art. Few below great elders of the main Faction ever achieve it—and that is one, of tens of millions! The first great benefit of Pseudo-Stormfire is simply that it is easier to achieve. But it is also a learning tool. Once you know Pseudo-Stormfire—once you climb the levels of mastery—why, it is like ascending rungs on a ladder! By the time you have reached the highest rung, all that is left is to make the final leap. Significantly simpler than leaping from the ladder's bottom, is it not?"

"The second great benefit… even at its lowest level, Pseudo-Stormfire allows the Condensation Cultivator to tap into powers far beyond their station! It is fiercer than any fire, more destructive than any lightning. It is by far the strongest single element a cultivator below Foundation can wield… our Factions all suffer from gluts of Cultivators stuck at that first bottleneck from Condensation to Foundation. Even for those with talent, the unlucky may stay stuck at Level 99 for centuries. Perhaps for the rest of their lives! For some, it is not soul talent they lack, but essence talent…Pseudo-Stormfire gives these unlucky souls a power to match their betters. Even at low mastery, Pseudo-Stormfire is equivalent in power to an expression of Elemental Law!"

This drew disbelieving mutterings. Lucian's smile tightened. "I would even go as far as to claim that at high mastery, Pseudo-Stormfire exceeds the power of a pure Elemental Law!"

"Ridiculous!" cried a tall, fork-bearded elder.

"Heresy!" snarled Elder Rini.

"Lucian... we have made some allowance for your eccentricities," muttered another elder. "This… this is an achievement, true. But your claim goes too far. What you say goes against universal Law."

"So it does," said Lucian. "I humbly suggest, my fellow elders, that your understandings of the Laws of the Universe… are incomplete. I am aware I have made a bold claim. Allow me to offer a demonstration."

He pointed a finger at the lake. Stormfire poured out in a thin dazzling line. It touched the edge of the water...

The lake burned.

Not a spreading fire. An instantaneous one. None of the lake was burning, and then instantaneously, all of it was. Fire had spread like lightning conducting—and it raged over the surface. Zane knew Laws of Fire, and he could tell they were Laws in that water directly opposed. It didn't matter; the Stormfire burned easily over it anyway. The water was electrocuted—with Fire.

In a flash it was over. A cloud of steam rising to the sky. Then nothing.

The silence was overwhelming. Even Zane felt the awe.

All he could think at that moment was—

If only he had this against those damned whales!

"That," continued Elder Lucian, "Can only be considered a medium mastery Stormfire, containing the Major Laws of Scorched Wrath, Thermal Dynamics, Arcane Conduction, and Discharge. What single element, esteemed elders, can hope to match it? Water clearly cannot… would you like to offer another?"

No one did. Lucian smiled grimly.

"This Pseudo Fusion Element," he went on, "Can be used in place of electricity or fire for the vast majority of skills. It is as simple as swapping it in—and it shall upgrade every such skill at least one tier. A Mortal Grade Epic skill becomes a Mortal Grade Legendary. Like that."

He bowed. "I must reiterate, however, even Pseudo-Stormfire is not for the faint of heart. Only true geniuses, on par with natives of Ur-Planets, may achieve this! Even then… some may take months or even years to achieve even basic mastery…"

His hands clasped behind his back again.

"In truth, Pseudo-Stormfire, at its most basic level, can be reduced to just two Major Laws: Scorched Wrath of the Elemental Fire and Discharge of the Elemental Law of Electricity. You can weave in more from there! The conceptual foundations are the same. Both govern the furious explosive hearts of their elements. The same emotion expressed in a different medium. It is this simple initial observation that led me down the long road to Pseudo-Stormfire. From there, I conducted decades of experiments! This is the formula I have distilled. Observe."

The Stormfire vanished; in its place lay a simple fireball laden with a familiar Law.

"The core is Scorched Wrath. From there, interweave Discharge like a lattice so that it melds into the flames… notice the pattern. Ingrain it in your memories. For it is the crux of Pseudo-Stormfire!"

The elder weaved it in with exaggerated slowness, as though Discharge were a needle and he was sewing electricity into the shifting fabric of flame. As he drew it, the air seemed to hum, like the universe itself was pleased with the movement. It was a sublime pattern, looping and swirling and zagging, a collection of perfect geometries. The pattern agreed with nature, somehow. It felt right, right at the level of the soul. It felt to Zane like seeing one of those golden ratio videos back in science class—where you could find the same simple pattern in a sunflower as in the spiral of a galaxy. The pattern was harmony. It erased the difference between fire and electricity, made null the forms, until all that was left was the feeling that animated them both.

Elder Lucien wove until the threads were inseparable, until Zane couldn't pick out Scorched Wrath from Discharge… just the fury of them, two, burning as one.

Stormfire.

Elder Lucian left it burning there. Already the pattern was vanishing from Zane's mind. The elder seemed to want him to memorize it. The rest of the elders frowned at it—they seemed to be trying to. Or maybe they were just in awe.

For Zane, it just wasn't happening. Not in a hundred years. He frowned. He thought that was how someone like Reina might learn this Law—it was how Elder Lucien had found it.

But Zane just stared at the Stormfire. He felt the way Fire and Lightning played off each other, felt the way they bonded, seamless. He didn't understand why he needed the pattern memorized, at least. Maybe it would have been hard to find his way here if he'd never seen it before.

Now that he knew what it felt like, he didn't understand why he couldn't just… feel his way there again? All the pattern did was trace the gap between Fire and Lightning, and in doing, erase it. But he'd felt what they were like together. All he had to do was compare the way they felt apart and feel his way across the difference, right? He probably couldn't memorize the raw shape of it if he tried. It seemed awfully complex… most of the elders there seemed to be struggling with it. Beads of sweat popped up on their wrinkled brows.

Was he just not getting something obvious? He scratched his head.

Maybe he'd see.

Sometimes when he comprehended Laws, he got the vague sense he was doing it the wrong way. At least not the way everyone else did it, the way you were supposed to do it. He seemed to get there just fine anyway most of the time. So he figured he'd just keep doing it.

The scene vanished.

***

But before he could try it, he needed the Major Law of Discharge. So, he got out his Stormheart Crystal and threw himself back into the comprehension.

It was a little harder getting to it because—and this was rare for him— he was too excited to settle down at first, to really relax his mind, let it open up.

Eventually, a haze of a vision came to him.

It was storming, and badly; forks of light flashed through the vast dark. He could hardly see—he was on a mountain somewhere, rain-stricken. Winds lashed the peak, screaming as they went.

A duel seemed about to go down.

On one side of that peak was a serpent, winding loop of vivid blue. Its eyes were so bright you couldn't even see the pupils, just crevices of light. A trident of horns lay between its eyes.

On the other side, crawling down from a massive boulder, there was a serpent outlined in red crackling lightning. A single scimitar of a horn reared out from its head. It screeched a challenge. The blue serpent answered.

And they ran together. There was a fury of sound and light, like a cannon's blast. Then they started coiling into each other, intertwining, and then he felt the way their powers shifted, opposing, twining, balancing each other as they fought—until they seemed one huge writhing beast, so tangled there was neither blue nor red, but a vivid purple. Their powers made and unmade each other. Something new was born. And Zane saw it.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕘𝕖 ℕ𝕖𝕦𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕫𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟

The scene faded…

A familiar fatigue started dragging at him again... He was starting to crash. No good... He ambled his way to the Permafrost Oyster's Pearl and drew out another few drops of it. He had to keep going.

He sat back down, squeezed his eyes shut, and started putting it all together. Charge Neutralization, Spark Charge Accumulation… swirling in his mind faster and faster, a buzzing whirlwind of feelings, coming together at the bottom in one fine point—

He gasped, shuddered. And opened his eyes.

𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕒𝕛𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔻𝕚𝕤𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕘𝕖

Now for Pseudo-Stormfire.

It wasn't often he was buzzing about learning a new Skill, but he was now.

He wondered if he could get it done this session if he drained the Pearl dry. There was the stuff that elder said about taking months or years or whatever, but Zane had heard that before, and it all kind of flew past him now. Nobody he knew took that long to learn a Law or Skill.

… Come to think of it, there was that phrase again—'natives of Ur-Planets.' Was that what Earth was?

He shook his head. No more drifting. No time.

He'd give this thing his best try. He grabbed the Pearl and took a big sip.