A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 44 Team Meeting 2

Chapter 44 Team Meeting 2

Carmen slumped against the wall, feeling like gravity had grown into a monstrous demon that had wrapped itself around her and was trying to suck the energy out of her, trying to seduce her to the floor with promises of relief, if only she would lie down and rest. The hallway was spinning so fast that she couldn't keep up. So she shut her eyes, mentally gave gravity the middle finger, and forced herself off the wall and forward a few more shambling steps.

Something had changed, some part of her power or some part of Raina's powers. But Carmen could finally sense Raina, was somewhat aware of where she was and how she was doing. And that sensation was what kept her moving, even though shards of her own bones were cutting her apart from the inside with every step. She could sense that Raina was far more wounded than she was. She could sense that Raina was on the crumbling edge of oblivion, shredded by the creature that had mind-slaved her.

That foul thing had called her sister! That thought was so disturbing, so wrong, that it actually helped Carmen gain a moment of clarity in her fractured, pain-soaked mind. She latched onto that clarity, using it to draw deep into her powers. Not sure what she was going to do, but hoping somehow it would help her get to her friend quicker.

She wrapped her power around the outside of her body the way she had once done when she had helped Ahleena pick up an unconscious Callin. Using it to influence the world around her much the same way her power influenced another's mind when she touched them. It was an aspect of her power she barely understood, and one that always felt like it was about to dart away from the grip of her control and burst out wildly. So it was one aspect of her power she rarely experimented with.

Now, with her focus so shaken and her body screaming in agony, she lost what little control she had over that side of her power. She watched inside in shock as it leached instantly into everything it touched around her, soaking deep and tying her to it completely, just like it did with someone's mind.

After one heart-stopping moment, she realized it had stabilized. It was not going to continue to flood out of her, leaving her just an empty husk of a person. She realized everything around her was now intrinsically tied to her, through the touch of her power coating everything.

And so tied to the world about her, she was able to push and play with it. As if the fabric of reality was hers to hold, to manipulate as she pleased. She was able to lift herself straight and stride down the hall, smooth and quick. Not pushing herself down the hall so much as wrapping bits of reality around her and forcing it past her. As if she was moving reality past her, instead of herself through it. It was an underlying truth of the nature of reality itself, dropped into her mind with the force of an atom bomb.

This intense truth of reality itself struck deep, ripples of understanding cascading outwards, each ripple stirring up a stronger realization, until the sheer magnitude of what she was doing with her power grew greater than she could bear to dwell on.

She retreated, pulling her logical thoughts far away from what she was doing with her power, instead latching onto the goal of getting to Raina, to helping her somehow. She knew somehow that she was the only one to help Raina now.

She didn't know how she knew that, or what she would do to help Raina, but she knew it to her very core, with no doubts. And she knew that once she helped Raina, the two of them would go hunting. They would find the creature that had enslaved Raina and they would rend her into inconsequential bits and scatter them into the winds.

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Just down the hall from Carmen, there was a great battle being fought. A battle of towering proportions, with cutting weapons rising and falling as far as the eye could see...yet a battle fought in stillness and complete silence.