"Think she'll be okay?" Ellen asked.

Deimos was idling outside the GC Headquarters building. We'd just dropped Sophia off there; she'd burned herself down to nothing trying to save the first team's survivors. There'd been three—half the team. Two of them were in the same hospital Jessie had therapy at, while the last one had been airlifted to the GC's own facility here at the headquarters. A-Rank healers had him under control now.

But Sophia had broken. That night, she'd collapsed on my couch and been absolutely unmovable. She didn't say anything, and she wouldn't eat or drink. We'd stayed up with her all night, and when she still hadn't recovered in the morning, we decided to drive her here.

She wasn't the first healer who'd snapped. And this wasn't even her first time. The moment she'd seen the doctor come out to meet her, she'd gotten out of the car on her own and practically thrown herself at him.

I was concerned. But the GC, for all its flaws, wanted to keep its healers—and its delvers, for that matter—in the game. I doubted they'd have Sophia ready to go in the next couple of days, so we were down a healer, but they'd work with her, help her through this, and get her up and running again. Either that, or they'd get her retired and in a hospital, helping people in controlled settings where she could avoid…what she'd had to see and do to save even the half a team she had.

"I don't know," I answered truthfully. "I hope so."

Deimos took off, and I closed my eyes.

I'd been putting off my Law-learning all night. With Sophia in the shape she was in, I didn't want to push myself too hard. Not until we knew she was safe and in good hands. But now…now, the pressure of Cyclone Forms trying to push to B-Rank was my main focus. "It's time," I said.

"Got it. GC center after?" Ellen asked.

"Yeah. Peoria. I'm ready for some new spells, too."

My focus locked in on the pressure I'd been feeling since the fight against the Obsidian Monolith, and I lost all sense of where I was or what I was doing.

The First and Second Laws of the Sirocco had been about power, strength, and patience. They'd felt incomplete, in a way—not my understanding of them, but the Laws themselves. The windstorm wasn't a patient force. Magic wasn't a patient force. It was the application of power, of Mana, in order to accomplish something now. Scripts and Bindings, sure; those were patient. But magic? How could that be about patience, really?

My goal here was to understand that contradiction.

How could the wind be patient?

And what did that patience mean?

I thought for a long time, atop my mental mountain. The wind across the desert was perfectly still. Not a single grain of sand moved. Not a single leaf fluttered on the brush around me. Stillness and quietness surrounded me.

But not calm.

It hit me slowly. The stillness. The quietness. They weren't the still, calm, silent feeling of a relaxed, low-key environment. The desert wasn't in motion because it knew. It knew that, deep down, there was no such thing as stillness.

Somewhere, a coyote was hunting. Or a jackrabbit was on the move. Or, far in the distance, a storm was brewing. This seeming calmness was little more than a different form of frantic energy, as the plants and animals that lived in the sands and rocks readied themselves for the storm's next coming. There was no such thing as stillness. That had to be it.

It wasn't. The Law wasn't complete. My understanding was still limited. What was I missing?

I stared down at the desert as the storm in the distance slowly made itself known. Wind poured in from the west, rocketing past the White Tanks and barreling toward Phoenix. Dust clouds engulfed the whole city, smothering its lights and noise. Cars pulled to the side of the road, and anyone outside found somewhere inside to be.

The same thing happened in the desert. The animals that had been hunting or foraging were gone. Those plants that could seemed to withdraw, curling their flowers and leaves inward as the sky darkened above them. Others couldn't; they rode the wind out their own way, the howling air shaking their leaves and spines. All around, the natural world reacted to the storm, and the storm acted on the world. That was another part of it—but it still wasn't the entire picture.

So I waited. The rest of it would reveal itself with time.

The windstorm faded suddenly. One moment, the desert was a churning mass of sand and dust that billowed up all around my mountain. The next, it was—for the first time—truly still. Properly, indisputably still. The black thunderheads waited overhead, ready to open with rain, lightning, or both. The desert waited below, bracing itself for what was to come.

The storm had caused it all. The false stillness by its absence, the shut-down by its arrival, and the pregnant, truly still pause by its presence. As the first raindrops fell around me, I understood. For the storm, restraint and action were one.

Law Learned: Third Law of the Sirocco Cyclone Forms: Rank C to B

The storm can take its time. It scars the land, fades, and returns. But above all else, the storm acts. It forces the world to yield to it—to cover and take cover before its winds and rains. The day may be still, but when the storm chooses to act, its winds will tear at the world and leave it irrevocably changed. By comprehending the balance of doing and waiting, Kade Noelstra, you have taken a step down the Stormsteel Path: restraint and action are one.

Saltspray upgrades to Cloudburst: Consume Rainfall Charges to silence all spellcasting in an area.

Thirty minutes later, we walked into the Peoria GC center to a familiar face.

"How is she?" Representative Jessie Gerald asked the moment we were close enough to hear her. My sister sat behind the reception desk, with no line in front of her. That was unusual; there were usually a few newer delvers needing help, or some veterans with specific questions. To have no one in was strange.

I shrugged. "I don't know. She finally did something on her own, though. I think she's going to be seeing those doctors for a while. It's not easy being a healer." My mind pulled up the image of her bleeding body and sobs; I'd saved her life, but I knew it had been close. If I hadn't gotten there when I had, or if it had been Yasmin alone…I'd be having the same reaction to a friend's death. "Thanks for taking the bus in. We could have—"

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"It's not a problem, Kade," Jessie said. "And I got your text. You've got Workroom Thirty-One for the next four hours. You'll have to find your own books, though. The boss has everyone else pulling info on the Carlsbad Break, but he won't say why, so I'm stuck at the desk all day."

"Sorry to hear that," I said. "Let's go, Ellen."

With the Cyclone Forms rank-up came a host of new spells in Ariette's Grimoire—plus an opportunity to dig into some of the spells Ellen could share with me. I was still using a few E and D-Rank spells—namely Ariette's Zephyr and Slicing Bolt—and it was time for some upgrades. But first, I needed to look over my kit and figure out what I had.

Lightning Chain had been proving its value as a C-Rank spell, gap-closer, and enemy-destabilizer, and I'd only scratched the surface of what I could do with it. There existed a world where I could leap from enemy to enemy with it, chaining attacks and disappearing almost before monsters could even react. I needed to hang on to it.

Same with Darkness. It wasn't a storm-based spell, but it did have synergy with Stormbreak. The cover of Darkness allowed me to use the skill aggressively against lone enemies without being found out immediately afterward, and without giving them a chance to disrupt me.

Then there were Shade Scythe, Slicing Bolt, and Ariette's Zephyr. I wanted to replace all three with B-Rank equivalents. Ariette's Zephyr had stopped being useful as a damage source at the last rank; now, all it did was carry Saltspray and Windfall for cheap. With Cloudburst replacing Saltspray, it was time for an upgrade. And both Slicing Bolt and Shade Scythe were 'just' raw damage. They didn't offer any utility.

"I've got one spell you should consider," Ellen said as the door shut, "but before I tell you about it, you should check out Ariette's Grimoire for your replacements. Build up a good list, then see if what I'm offering is better than what you can find."

"Got it." I cracked open Ariette's Grimoire and started searching.

Ariette's Zephyr had a direct, B-Rank upgrade. It was called Ariette's Hurricane, and much like the Zephyr, it took the form of darts of compressed air. Unlike the Zephyr, though, the Hurricane moved a lot of air; its darts were more like spears, and the base casting of the spell produced a half-dozen of them that hovered around the caster's head until commanded to impact—or until a viable target got too close. I added it to my list.

I also added an alternative—Ariette's Microburst. At first, I wasn't convinced; the spell cost a fortune, and its area of effect was…limited. In fact, it was very limited; the spell only hit a six-inch square. But it hit it hard. Ariette's own testimony claimed that a B-Rank caster could punch through two inches of portal metal with it. I already had Rain-Slicked Blade for armored enemies, but after some hesitation, I threw it on the list as well.

Then there was replacing Shade Scythe and Slicing Bolt.

As I flipped through the spellbook, no options stood out right away. I wanted raw damage, and I wanted it in lightning form, but even Brendan's Hymnal didn't offer precisely what I wanted. Sure, both Ariette and Brendan had been mighty casters, and they both had plenty of high-damage spells. But none of them did what I wanted them to do. None of them offered the kind of raw power I'd felt Angelo Lawrence and Queen Mother Yalerox command.

Ellen watched me as I got more and more frustrated. Then, when I was about to break, she cleared her throat. "Okay. Stop. I've been thinking. You're good for up-front damage, Kade. Stormsong's got that covered. And Stormbreak gives you an all-in finisher in a boss fight. I've got most of the area damage under control, and you can cover that with your skills. What you need is a high-hitting move you can use in a regular fight, but it doesn't have to be fast, right?"

I sighed. Speed was the name of my game so far. "What are you thinking?"

"Be like Angelo Lawrence."

"I'm trying. How?"

Ellen grinned. "Simple. You need to stop thinking about your spells as individual weapons and think about them as a greater whole." She pulled out a set of multi-colored sticky notes.

I stared at them. They were…thorough. She'd documented all of my spells, all of my skills, and a dozen potential paths I could take. And, circled in purple pen on a green sticky, was Lightning Strikes Twice.

"So, my theory is to combine Polarity Shift with Lightning Strikes Twice. Brendan only got so much power out of Polarity Shift because it cost him Mana to cast it and add it to spells. That gave him limits. At some point, he'd run out of Mana while casting it. But if you can duplicate it…"

She let me make the connection. "I can use the original to power up the copy, and get 'free' Polarity."

I'd looked at Polarity Shift before. It was a B-Rank spell out of Brendan's Hymnal, and it empowered the next lightning spell the caster used. The trick was that it could also empower itself, but the cost of that grew out of control pretty quickly. But…Ellen was half-right. Lightning Strikes Twice could duplicate it. She was missing half of the picture, though. "You didn't factor my aura into this, did you?"

Ellen stared at the sticky notes for almost a minute. Then she started tearing them off the page. "I'll need to recalculate all of this. Sorry—"

"No," I laughed. "It's going to work. It'll probably work even better. I just need a spell to finish the string on."

"Oh, that's easy." Ellen grabbed Brendan's Hymnal and flipped to the back. Then she pulled her own grimoire and opened it to a bookmarked page. "Read these together."

The first spell was simple. Thunder Crash. It was a multi-strike lightning spell that hit a single target a half-dozen times, with what looked like unremarkable results. I'd read it about three times, and nothing about it had stood out. Even with the Polarity Shift advantage, it wouldn't be anything special. Not what I was after.

The second spell, from Ellen's book, changed things. It was called Touch of Shadow, and it added shadow as a spell—without compromising the spell's original element. I raised an eyebrow at Ellen, who pointed. "I saw that green-black lightning. And I know what your endgame is. You need weapons that the God of Thunder doesn't understand. If you don't start building them now, then when?"

Ellen was right. It wasn't about the perfect spell now. It was about setting up to be Angelo Lawrence—or even more than him—when I needed it. The God of Thunder was watching even now, but like he'd said, Ellen's interference in the Stormsteel Path was a deviation. He didn't know what would happen with her influence.

"Sure. Let's do it."

I got to work, removing the old spells—Ariette's Zephyr, Slicing Bolt, and Shade Scythe—and adding the new ones. Polarity Shift and Thunder Crash took almost half of my core by themselves, and when I finally finished inscribing Touch of Shadow, there wasn't room for even an E-Rank spell. It was completely full.

But I had a new suite of spells. I pulled up my status and spells.

User: Kade Noelstra Reforged Core, B-Rank Stamina: 367/440, Mana: 216/550

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (B-01 to B-02, Unique, Merged, God-Touched) 2. Thunderbolt Forms (B-01 to B-03, Altered, Merged) 3. Mistwalk Forms (B-01 to B-02, Altered, Merged) 4. Cyclone Forms (C-10 to B-01, Altered, Merged) 5. Stormlight Bond (C-10, Altered, Merged) 6. Shadowstorm Battery (D-05 to D-07, Altered, Merged, Dual) 7. Stormbreak (D-01 to D-03, Unique)

Path: Stormsteel Path Aura: Negative Space Laws: First Law of the Stormcore, Law of the Shadowed Storm, First Law of Darkened Lightning, Third Law of the Sirocco

Spells: Darkness, Lightning Chain, Polarity Shift, Thunder Crash, Touch of Shadow

It had taken hours, but my build was probably more complete than it had ever been. Thunder Crash could be used independently or as part of an engine with Lightning Strikes Twice, Touch of Shadow, and combo'd Polarity Shifts. I had a crowd control in Darkness, and a movement-enhancer in Lightning Chain. It was limited, but it was the beginning of something powerful.

Ellen nodded quickly, then stood up. "Okay, Kade. Now, it's time to focus on our biggest problem."

"Agreed. It's time to do something about Bob."

"Right. Jessie texted me while you were working on your spells. She's got an idea. It's a bad one, but it's also something Bob won't see coming."

I joined Ellen, books tucked under my arm, and we walked out of the door—and back toward Jessie's post at the front desk.

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