3 - The Storm's Laws

I sold the core to Jessie.

It hurt to do it, but she paid me fair market price, minus my percentage of the five percent fee.

Then I handed the money right back to her the second we were back in our apartment and she put the tablet down. "Do you have a fund for guild stuff? If not, we need to start one. That'll be a good start."

"Actually, the C-Rank dungeon you guys cleared got you a good start. This is a drop in the bucket compared to that. And don't do that anymore. Not until you're stronger and I know you'll be safe," Jessie said. She balled her fists.

"I'm going to get stronger right now," I said.

"Oh. I want to watch, then."

I sighed. "The first part should be fine. I need to learn a couple of Laws to rank up my skills. I've got Cyclone Forms and Sunbeam Bond to work on. But the second part, after I'm done with that, you'll need to be in another room for. Jeff's D to C advancement wasn't an issue, but I don't trust the Stormsteel Core not to interfere."

"Should I text Ellen and have her come over?"

"No. Absolutely not. If something weird happens, her shadow presence won't help things." Ellen had been a rock-solid teammate and friend, but her shadow magic and my storm powers had already started to mix a little when we merged skills or ranked them up. The last thing I wanted was a more complicated situation. Not when the Stormsteel Core was already unpredictable.

"Okay," Jessie said. Then she sat down on the couch. "Are you going to get started?"

"Yes."

I dropped into a cross-legged sitting pose and closed my eyes, ignoring Jessie's snort. I'd never liked meditation, and she knew it. I summoned the Stormsteel Core and focused my attention on it.

The snort cut off, and the howling wind filled my ears.

I was back on the mountain. The storm raged around me, but this time, something felt different. I tried to open my eyes to figure out what it was, but a gust battered my face with rain, and lightning struck the next peak over. But something…definitely something.

It wasn't that things had gone wrong. It was that there was a sense of finality to the storm. Like it was expending the last of its fury on the mountain west of Phoenix, and when it was done, it'd be done for good.

The end of the storm.

The end of my foundation.

I clenched my fists tightly and forced my eyes open. It was bright. Shockingly bright. Palo Verde trees and saguaro cacti shook in the wind down below, their green branches swaying back and forth.

The wind slowed. Then it stopped, and I pushed myself to my feet in the calm after the storm. Rain still fell, but where it had been bullets against my body, now it was a light drizzle that soaked through my T-shirt but only brushed my skin. The mountain was calm.

I was calm.

It took a long time to realize it. I'd been angry for a long time—since Mom disappeared—and even though Dad's lessons had helped temper that rage, it had always been present. And it wasn't gone now. It was still there, just below the surface. Still ready to bubble up at the first sign that it was needed. It wasn't like I'd found some sort of inner peace. That inner peace didn't exist. Not for me.

And that was okay. The storm had calmed. It had spent what fury it could. That was the lesson; after the fury, the mountain was still there. The storm hadn't won. Not yet.

But it was still calm. The storm didn't need to win every fight immediately. It would, after all, be back. And eventually, it would win. The streams of water running down the mountainside ate away at the black rock, running into the once-dry arroyos below. A few larger rocks had shifted, tumbling down into the canyons between mountains. The storm hadn't won. But it had made progress. The mountain would fall. Eventually.

This Law felt like a contradiction, like some of the previous ones. And, more than that, it mirrored something my father had once said. 'Patience is power, Kade,' he'd said one day after I'd been suspended for fighting.

That was the truth here.

No. The inverse was the truth.

Power is patient.

Law Learned: First Law of the Sirocco Cyclone Forms: Rank E to Rank D

The strongest storms shape coastlines and topple buildings. They churn oceans to a froth and uproot trees. But even the strongest storm diminishes with time—only to be reborn again and again. The strongest mountains will eventually yield to the storm. Therefore, the storm can take its time. By restraining your fury and offering a reprieve, Kade Noelstra, you have taken a step down the Stormsteel Path: power is patient.

The Law's power flowed into Cyclone Forms, and I felt myself slipping back into the real world. Instead, I forced myself back into a sitting position. I had a second Law to learn, and I couldn't leave until I'd gotten it.

My mind reeled. Warm liquid trickled down my face and between my lips; I tasted blood. Something was wrong. My head felt like it had been split by an axe. Every ounce of my will went into forcing myself to refocus through the agonizing pain as the worst migraine I'd ever felt set in. I couldn't open my eyes. Not even if I wanted to. I licked my lips again and tasted salty tears mixed in with the blood.

And I couldn't dull the pain with Stamina. It wasn't possible. I had to try something else. Something I hadn't had to use in a long time.

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I breathed. Held it. Counted. Released. Breathe, hold, count, release. One of Jessie's breathing techniques for mitigating pain. She'd taught it to me after Dad died. Breathe. Hold. Count. Release.

I forced my eyes open as I released my tenth breath.

The desert was alive all around me. Pink and yellow prickly pear flowers had bloomed, the rabbit brush and Mormon tea were a green so bright it competed with the palo verde trees, and it smelled like life. The sand hadn't yet dried, and a trickle of water still dripped from the mountain peak.

But mostly, it was bright. The kind of bright that happens in the moments just before a storm rolls in, or just after the sun breaks through it. Sunbeams beat down on the desert below.

Thunder echoed in the distance.

Everything went still.

The roadrunners and quail froze. Far in the distance, a coyote paused on the ridge between two mountains, then dipped below the saddle. For a second, there was no wind. There was only the sun breaking through the fading stormclouds overhead, a slight trickle of rainwater dripping from the mountain, and absolute silence.

My mind ached. It wasn't a physical pain, I realized. It was entirely in my head and imaginary. But that didn't make it unreal. Blood and tears kept trickling down from my nose and eyes, and when I tried to wipe them away, the movement only made my migraine worse.

I needed to focus. But focus was so hard right now. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my fists shut until my knuckles hurt. What was the Law here? What lesson was the storm trying to teach? I couldn't see it, no matter where I looked in front of me. All I could see was bright light and blossoming flowers. There wasn't a Law in that.

If it wasn't in front of me…the Law had to be behind me. For a moment, patience warred with the pain in my mind. But the pain won. I started to turn, slowly, inch by inch. Every jerking movement sent agony through my skull and a spurt of blood across my face, but I gradually turned to the west.

And there, on the horizon, was another storm.

Power is patient.

It worked its way slowly across the desert as I watched from my mountaintop perch, a predator stalking prey. The desert slowly stilled again. This time, the water didn't drip, and the breeze didn't blow through the saltbush branches. This time, it was perfectly, completely calm.

So calm I could watch the wind front rip across the hills.

It came like a wall, kicking up dust that had been mud only a second before. A tan-gray wall. In front of it was calm, still air. Behind it was the beginning of another wave of fury.

There it was. The Law.

It was tied to the previous one. The reason the storm could afford to be patient with its power. Even after the first one broke, when the world seemed perfectly calm, thunder still echoed in the distance. There was always another storm.

There is always another storm.

Law Learned: First Law of the Godray Sunbeam Bond: Rank E to Rank D

When the storm passes, the sun returns. Its light punches through the spent clouds and scours the earth below in blinding brightness. Plants grow, and birds sing. The world grows in the stillness. But in the distance, dark clouds form. By understanding the storm's endless cycle, you have taken a step down the Stormsteel Path: there is always another storm.

My eyes jerked open. Then I squeezed them closed.

I was in agony. My face was soaked with sweat, blood, and tears. And I wasn't sitting up anymore. I was down on the living room's floor, with a towel under my head.

So, that was new.

I hadn't ever gone down during a Law-learning session. And they'd usually been instantaneous. Something about doing two at once had been…a mistake. A big one. "How long…?" I groaned.

"About ten minutes," Jessie said from the couch. Her face was buried in her computer, but when she looked over the top, her eyebrows were furrowed in worry and concern. "I called Ellen, but she didn't pick up, so I texted her. She just responded 'Family stuff, can't help. Keep his head on something soft,' so I grabbed a towel. She also said to punch you, but to wait until you were sitting upright. That was gross, by the way."

I laughed. It hurt my splitting head, but I did it anyway. And then I stayed down.

No point in giving Jessie a free hit.

"Lesson learned," I said. "No more than one Law at a time. This could get rough otherwise. And definitely no more than one in combat. Ever. It usually happens instantly."

"Yeah, being knocked out for ten minutes seems…not smart."

I nodded. That hurt, too. "I'm ready for my D-Rank push."

But was I? Something felt wrong. With my throbbing headache, it took me a while to figure out what it was. But eventually, I put my finger on it. "I don't think I can keep learning Laws this way."

"Tell me about it," Jessie said. She pointed at the bloody towel. "You're cleaning that up, by the way."

"No, I mean, I think I'm going to need to find a different source of learning. The mountain I've been visiting felt like it was almost out of lessons to teach when I arrived, and the two I learned felt like the end of the storm. I'm not sure where to go from here, either."

"Talk to the God of Thunder?" Jessie asked.

"No." I pushed myself to my feet. The God of Thunder could almost certainly help me progress, but I didn't have a way to contact him, and even if I did, I wasn't sure I was ready. "Maybe if there's not a better way once I hit D-Rank, but I've got a feeling more opportunities will open up when I rank up. I'm going to work on that first."

"Alright. Up to you." Jessie closed her computer and stood up. "Do you need me to do anything?"

"No." I paused. "Actually, there is something. Can you start digging into everything you can figure out about Laws? Maybe there's an obvious answer somewhere, and I'm just missing it."

"Sure, Kade."

"Thanks," I said. I slowly moved over to the kitchen and grabbed some water. It helped with the headache. "Okay, it's about time I see what the process for becoming D-Rank really is—and how much of a mess the Stormsteel Core will make it. I need you to go to your room and hunker down. I'm going to do this in my own room, that way if things get weird, you stay safe."

Jessie frowned. Then she grabbed her laptop and walked toward the hall. I relaxed. She was actually going to listen.

Then her fist slammed into my shoulder. "Ow!"

"Sorry," she said, grinning like a demon. "Ellen said I had to, so blame her."

Ellen: Please tell me you're not starting your trial now.

Kade: Okay. I'm not starting my trial now.

Ellen: I don't believe you. I can't believe you'd start it without me.

Kade: It's bad enough Jessie's here. I don't want you getting hurt, too.

Ellen: Then why not wait? I'll pick Jessie up in a few.

Ellen had begged out of her family engagement—which was just Bob, doing Bob stuff at the reception she'd agreed to attend—as quickly as she could. It wasn't easy; he really wanted her there, since the CEO of the company he was trying to acquire was supposed to be attending. She'd had to be on her best behavior. Hands in lap, legs crossed, demure smiles and tiny bites of salmon on crackers or expensive cheeses. And it had been agony.

Not only because it was always agony—Ellen didn't want to be Little Miss Corporate Wealth any more than she wanted to be stabbed in the gut by a goblin—but because Jessie had tipped her off to Kade's impending D-Rank trial, and she wanted to be there for it.

He didn't seem to want her there, though. She was halfway to Deimos when he finally texted her back.

Kade: Fine. Come get her. I'll have her waiting downstairs. You'd better have something fun planned, though. She's pissed.

Ellen nodded as she buckled herself in and her car slammed on the gas, leaving the downtown art gallery Bob had reserved for the reception behind.

When it came to keeping Jessie happy and distracted, she had two advantages over Kade that he couldn't hope to replicate—at least for now.

Ellen: Jessie, have you been on a date with Stephen yet?

Ellen: A real one, I mean. Not hanging out after school.

Jessie: Uh. No, I guess not.

Ellen: Alright. Let's get you ready for when it's time to fix that.

Jessie: What?

Ellen: I mean a dress, heels, and a jacket. I'll pick you up in five. We can talk about it once we're moving. I've already contacted my shop, so they know we're on the way.

Jessie: Fine. I know exactly what this is, but fine.

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