The Black Gods War

implements. Control the storm.
    Some buried instinct took over. Her muscles softened and her heart warmed. Every hair on her body stood straight up as an awesome power coursed through her. She began to feel the storm so profoundly that the boundary between her spirit and the sky dissolved. Was she directing the weather, or was it directing her?
    She felt the tempest responding to her, and the more she allowed herself to welcome it, the more aggressively it pounded the Pawelon forces with deluges of ice. Her instincts led her inward to even greater exultation. As she went deeper all capacity for rational thought disappeared.
    A column of lightning erupted. It streaked down and startled her with its thickness, as it pulsed and rolled all around Pawelon’s forces. Moving by sheer instinct, Lucia squeezed Ysa's sword and her body tingled with divine power from head to toe. She felt flushed with heat, feeling the storm ravaging the Pawelon men with savage power.
    Another column of electricity came down. Another. And another.
    And then, without warning, the sensations subsided. The lightning columns shrank and then disappeared. Her mind returned to a normal state of awareness, and her profound connection with the natural elements dried up. The clouds turned from black to grey, then chestnut to white, rising into the heavens. She felt a sense of loss, of abandonment, as the sky no longer embraced her.
    Looking down at the blood coating Ysa’s white blade, she remembered what she had done.
    Lucia sensed an evil presence, and nausea overcame her.

Chapter Nine: A Burial Truce Offering

    THE CLOUDS SWIRLED FASTER above Pawelon’s forces and turned pitch-black. A vicious, freezing wind blew down. The deafening thunder drubbed Rao’s ears and seized his heart. He cowered as the boom froze his mind.
    The storm goddess’s rage weakened his muscles, his concentration, his resolve. Did Briraji kill the royal daughter?
    It doesn’t matter.
    With those words, Rao withdrew his attention from his body and physical senses, resting for a moment in the spacious emptiness underlying existence.
    He returned his awareness to his body: muscles relaxing, blood flowing, breath arising and falling.
    He adopted a wide, solid stance and detached again from his thoughts, body, and senses. A single point of light appeared in the black emptiness and it became the focus of his meditation. His attention remained on the tiny light for seven long breaths, until the light expanded and washed over him, giving him glimpses of nonmaterial realities intersecting his world.
    Focus on the battlefield.
    The chaotic flood of information fell away from his awareness, like light retreating into a tunnel. His physical being transformed into a lighter, subtler body, and he saw the battlefield anew.
    The stormy sky appeared as a complex mass of blinding light and shadow, unified as a single field by some greater intelligence. The sky breathed with wild contractions, moving lower to the ground, until it hovered just above Pawelon’s troops.
    Rao steeled himself with conviction: You will not engulf my people.
    He pushed his awareness into the body of a random Pawelon soldier to witness his experience, finding panic amid the darkness, bitter cold, and biting hail. A moment later, a pillar of electrical force ripped through the man, slamming him like a thousand bricks.
    Rao drew his consciousness away and observed the scene. More columns of lightning arose between the ground and sky, moving around like puppets under strings. The deadly clouds sank lower and the Rezzians began racing toward the Pawelons and throwing their spears. If they kept coming, close combat would favor the invaders.
    He meditated: How can I stop their goddess?
    He noticed then, despite all the dazzling flashes of light, the glowing of a single human soul where the two armies were colliding. The subtle bodies of most men appeared a dull red, but here was a gigantic, swirling field of yellow and white surrounding an intense red and black pulse. Trails of light stretched up from this being to the sky.
    The royal daughter is alive!
    Each vibrant line between her and the sky was a gossamer trace of psychic influence. Rao poured his awareness into one of the trails of light.
    Such a glorious sensation! Expanding light and power, ecstacy and interconnection.
    He tried to focus his attention, to sever this connection between the royal daughter and the storm. The light swung around wildly, battling his