My only friends at the Thunder Tower were my amulets. Any time they ran out, I couldn’t sleep. Any time I got a new batch, I’d clean them, try them on, and just spend whole hours at a time staring at them—admiring the slightest differences between the gems embedded in their metal.

  They were the first thing I checked in the morning.

  The last redness I saw in the eve.

  And I never had enough.

  But now?

  Now I am cackling as I throw lightning bolt after lightning bolt at the Witch of Dreams. The redness streaks towards her and she defends frantically with half-shaped aether complexes.

  But she cannot defeat me. Not when I’m like this.

  No one can defeat me when I’m like this.

  I imbue lightning into my legs and explode off the ground. I am crimson in the night. A mere flash of light. She throws net casts of aether to entrap me, but I slice through them with ease. Hypna retreats up the hill. I cut her off—taking one bounding step after another and appearing next to her in an instant. My body twists with violent glee as I smash my fist towards her in an Iron Winter variation. My whole arm is wreathed in crimson. Its trajectory will flatten her to the earth.

  However, she imbues the aether into her palms, making them glow a starry blue, and deftly pushes at my bicep. My downward punch turns away from her—at the cost of a few stray lightning streaks chaining along her arms and scorching them. Hypna yelps just before my fist hits the ground. Lightning creates an earth-shattering explosion that sends her flying off the hill in a smoky haze of dirt, rubble, and the trailing essence of blue aether.

  I don’t even let her hit the ground.

  Instead, I lasso her with my left hand, attach myself to a fat cloud with my right, and swing us both up. I want to make a full arc around the cloud and whip her to the cottage.

  SHINZZZZ! She slices my lasso connection with a blade of aether extending from her palm. Impressive shaping skills. Still, she does so too late—we are high above the earth now. I can see the end of Thrae’s dream in the distant horizon: a black, voidless place beyond the lush countryside of rivers running through amber fields of wheat and spirit-crop.

  Hypna doesn’t fall.

  Rather the witch sprouts angel wings of blue aether, their translucent feathers shedding slightly. A haloed purple and black crown of aether forms as well, hovering over her head. Its palisades are mere spikes of differing lengths, striking into the ring of energy like thorns.

  Her hands move rapidly, spinning and weaving a weapon of aether.

  As if I’m just going to let that happen—

  I reach the cloud’s underside. Press my feet against it and scrunch up before kicking off, my body becoming an arrow of red death, my feet trailing the wetness of the cloud’s crystals. I have become the lightning that storms issue, for my body must look like a red bolt spit by the cloud, now streaking towards her, now engulfed by sparkling death, now raging against the twilight like a defiant, discordant tune.

  The droplets that trail me glow in the reflection of the blues, reds, and purples of the battle.

  Hypna closes her eyes in deep seated concentration. From her palms, the aether forms a sword far too large for her, or any man, to hold. It is of raw energy and it blooms forth like an upside down cross. The blue edges shiver violently, sputtering like uncaged fire. It is a blade that could rival the weapons in the Giant’s Glades.

  The witch levels a look of pity at me. Then, she swings the blade.

  When the sword moves, it is the sound of the world turning, the ground cracking, the skies opening for the angels to levy forth their spears and shooting stars at djinns and the hells.

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  But when I move, sound follows in my wake—for I am the messenger for clap of thunder.

  She wields the blade easily. The Aether blade sunders the very cloud I clung to. The sky opens and the light of the half-formed moon pours upon us. She’s too slow. My form blurs to hers, slipping beneath the arc of her sword. I strike with impromptu twin daggers of lightning. They score her black and something in Hypna’s eyes diminishes before she falls and the angel wings shed a blizzard of feathers, the haloed aether crown now shattering into twilight colored essence that snows upward and illuminates my wrathful visage.

  I pursue.

  I punch three bolts to follow her before spinning into a roll, twisting over to my shoulder to land amongst the poppies.

  My ears perk at the thud of her crash. Then, the scream of three bolts pierces my eardrums. They kick up a smog of dust and miasma from the dead spirit-flowers.

  It's over.

  Surprisingly, rather than relief or jubilation all I can think is…

  That was it?

  I shake my head. The adrenaline still runs plentiful through my veins, yet, I have nowhere to direct the lightning anymore. Before I know it, my legs take me to her body, half hoping she’s somehow survived.

  Since when did you start thinking like this? I pause, coughing on some of the dust. Do the amulets give you that much joy? The scoff that comes after that thought is enough of an answer. After all, the very weight of that sackful of angel dust makes me giddy. I want to use more. I want to use them all.

  In the real world, I have to be so careful. So cautious about how I use them, when I use them, and how controlled my strikes have to be

  That was one good about the Tower—one thing I’m missing now: the free range. The ability to just kill however I wanted to kill, without restraint. To scorch the land with my lightning. My power.

  The Elders think they control it? They can’t even bring themselves to use it. It's always been mine. Always.

  And I will have to make it my own in reality. They say immersion isn’t possible? I’ll prove them wrong. I’ll be the first—the one to make lightning into an element.

  I swear.

  With that inner proclamation, the dust folds away and reveals the coughing, burnt, bloody Witch of Dreams.

  Her face is still somehow so pristine—yet her body exacts the wretched tolls of my angel dust. Lightning scars across her bare skin through the ripped cloth on her shoulders in veiny webs.

  I’m surprised she’s alive. And yet…

  “I thought you were stronger,” I mutter. She wheezes out a laugh in response. I raise an eyebrow. “What’s so funny?”

  Her laughing heightens. “You—he—you’re not part of them, are you?” When I don’t answer, she asks “do you even know what the entity is?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Ah, then I guess this has been a fruitless battle.”

  I approach her and kneel by her form. “I don’t even understand how you’re doing this to be honest. It could be Thrae that’s making you… sentient, somehow. I don’t know. But maybe you can answer some of my questions.”

  The colder logic of me has taken back the reins. Even though the lightning still sparkles from my fingertips, I know it's best to take advantage of this opportunity. Why kill her when I can use her?

  She sits up on her elbows. “What are you talking about?”

  “You can drop the act now. I know it's you, Thraevirula.”

  “You keep saying that name. But I don’t know any Witch of Plagues.”

  Shit. What the hell?

  “How do you—

  “Its in the name itself Thraevirula means Witch of Plagues in Incanta.”

  So is it really not Thrae? Did Hypna somehow just gain sentience on her own? That makes no sense. Unless I did something on accident—which I don’t think I did—then, how is this even happening—

  “Let me take a closer look,” Hypna says as suddenly, with a burst of energy that betrays her injured look, she clamps onto my hand.

  Shit.

  Don’t let her do whatever she’s trying to do dumbass—I wince and try splurging lightning, but her aether connection holds fast.

  Hypna looks into my eyes.

  “Sorry about this,” she says.

  With that, the Witch of Dreams delves into my mind.