A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 55 Breaking Links 2

Chapter 55 Breaking Links 2

"Carmen! Do something!" Jace screamed, seeing the wisps of smoke rising up from around the twins, from their skin.

Their faces begin to contort in agony as their powers fell. The lashing, twisting web of blue power surrounding them was pressing ever closer, ever tighter, beginning to cut into them with a skin-eating heat.

Carmen sprinted forward, no plan in mind but to simply touch the twins and hope that her powers could somehow stabilize them. Before she got even ten feet from them, a snapping whip of ragged blue power arced outwards from them and struck her directly in the center of her chest. The raw power of it sent her airborne, flying backwards across the room.

She skidded along the floor twenty feet before bouncing off the wall, a crushing impact that filled her ears with the resounding crunch of her own breaking bones. Every last drop of air in her lungs was blasted outwards, and her core muscles began to spasm, no longer working in concert to pull in another breath. Tiny white dots, blurry edges flaring brighter, then dimmer, swam around her vision, confusing her. What had happened? Why did it feel like her entire body had been dipped into molten steel?

Desperate and confused, she sent her powers down to her hands, feeling them begin to tingle with that familiar pin-prick dance of icy-hot energy, feeling her power well up inside like a giant snake of fire with fangs of ice uncoiling from a hidden pit behind her memories. Coughing weakly, blood dripping from her mouth to paint the floor, she allowed it to reach higher than she could ever remember before wrapping her hands tight around her midsection. And her own power surged into her, a rush of power without direction.

Her voice echoed around the room as she screamed out her agony, her power healing the damage within her brutally fast. Broken ribs violently sawing back into place, tissue hurtling back together, muscles snapping back into place. She found herself lying on the floor on her belly, gasping like a dying fish. Her eyes were clear, and her thoughts began to structure then as she became aware that she was no longer in pain. In fact, as she climbed to her feet, she realized she felt more alive and vibrant, than she could ever remember.

She looked down at herself in amazement, seeing a faint nimbus of softly glowing gold wrapping itself around her, seeming to drift in and out of her body everywhere it traveled. And everywhere that flickering gold light went, it left a bit of unnatural strength behind. The image brought a dark memory up from the grave inside her mind, slithering and drooling with madness. She pushed it down with a well-practiced wall of ice, burying it behind apathy. As she had done for so many years.

She channeled that power down to her legs and sprinted back across the room, her mind wondering at the unnatural, exhilarating burst of speed. She moved faster than any human should, almost seeming to dart from where she was standing to right in front of the twins in an eye-blink.

This time, when that snapping whip of power arced outwards to strike her, the faint golden nimbus around her repelled it, deflecting it outwards in a scattering spray of sparks. It still made her stumble, it still shook her, making her teeth click painfully together. But it didn't take her off her feet, it didn't throw her across the room.

The arcs increased in intensity, rapid-fire lightning bolts slamming into her golden shield, beginning to hurt bad enough to make her whimper as she waded forward, her hands outstretched. She needed to touch the twins. She needed to get inside their minds and convince them that this was just Callin, that they didn't need to kill themselves, and most likely him, holding him out.

She felt guilty at that thought, knowing that she herself couldn't bear that reality. She herself had held him out, had rejected him completely. But the twins...couldn't they hold that link with him because there were two of them? Weren't they together stronger than her alone?