Chapter 78 Thundercloud

  Seven lines of unspun silver wool were pulled inwards in a spiral towards a point directly above the waking giant of economic might. The sea breeze had entirely fallen silent and in its place was a firm but gentle pressure from the sky. The stars were hidden away like fireflies at the sight of dawn as the seven nimbostratus tips of a future storm came together. The point where all of the clouds gathered steadily got wider and wider but never stopped its graceful but unfathomably powerful twirl in the heavens.

  Isaac felt a weight in his bones start to settle in from the sudden increase in pressure and the slight drop in temperature. “It’s still not cold enough to snow.” He thought aloud. A moment later, he heard Lenna’s familiar boots hitting the stone path as she jogged into the courtyard and then over to them. “Everything went well?” He asked her without taking his eyes off of the churning epitome of natural power being created and guided by a lone man.

  “Yes.” Lenna replied. “I have never fought in the snow before.” She commented as she joined the boys in gazing up at the sky. The sun tried to cast its early dawn oranges onto the underside of the forming storm but it only continued to grow stronger as if in total defiance of the celestial object itself. The wind started to pick up in perfect synchronization with the rotation of the thundercloud. At their point, not far but not quite close to the center of the city, the wind was moving quite quickly. They could tell from the roar and whistle of the wind that started to come from behind them that the farther from the center one got, the harsher the winds would become.

  “There might be some actual damage at this rate.” Alexander warned with clear worry in his voice. “It wouldn’t surprise me if some roofs in the outskirts were torn off completely.” He looked at Isaac’s total lack of empathy towards those that might be affected by the incoming storm and then turned to Lenna. “Can you tell whoever is doing that, the Thundering Blizzard, I think, to lower the speed by a bit. The ships in port might not even be safe.”

  “He knows what he’s doing.” Lenna replied simply. “Just wait, something is about to change, I can feel it.” Lenna had never experienced a storm on the surface, especially not one made by mortal hands, but her instincts were telling her that an expression of true power was about unfurl.

  “If you say so…” Alexander whispered and turned to look back up at the storm cloud that had grown at least as large as the city.

  The air was becoming more and more dry as every drop of moisture was pulled from it towards the sky to feed the ever growing unnatural disaster. It just kept growing and getting darker minute after minute. By the time the creator of the storm seemed to think that it had grown enough, there were people on the streets looking up at the sky in horror and wonder. A wooden roof tile was ripped off and launched through a nearby window as Isaac’s cloak threatened to yank free. Then, all of a sudden, the clouds changed their dance from a twirl to a shimmy.

  The center point of the storm started counter rotating for only around two dozen seconds before it shifted back to its normal rotation. The ripple of counter rotation rolled out from the center and as it passed the cloud began to rapidly grow. Twenty seconds later it switched again and then two dozen seconds after that it switched back. In rolling pulses of controlled mayhem, the storm nearly doubled in size. It took almost two minutes for the change in the storm cloud to reach the wind on the ground, and when it did, the temperature suddenly plummeted. It happened so quickly that it gave Isaac chills as the wind suddenly stopped swirling and began buffeting them. Instead of a powerful rotational force, the wind came down from the heavens in waves that felt warm but were followed by extreme cold.

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  Without any warning at all, there was a bright flash of light that instantly turned Lenna’s lenses black as lightning coursed through the sky like it was on the warpath. All of the back and forth of the clouds was causing so much friction in them that the first lightning bolt hadn’t even fully faded before another screamed in anger and triumph across the heavens.

  ‘How is this happening?’ Shamesh asked Isaac curiously. There was so much that he did not understand and something as crazy as what was happening above them had suddenly reached almost to the top of his list.

  ‘He’s using the rapidly changing air pressure to force cooler air from the cloud height to reach the ground.’ Isaac realized with widening eyes. ‘He has to be bringing in more cold air from above… that’s how he’s planning to turn the thundercloud into snow!’ The perfect and powerful application of force made Isaac feel like he was watching an orchestra with Heitor as the maestro. ‘The clouds are rubbing against themselves and creating static and it is all discharging at once, over and over again.’ It was a roaring symphony of physics and mana working in perfect tandem at the hands of a true master and it was utterly breathtaking, especially for someone like Isaac who sort of had an idea of what was actually happening.

  A massive sheet of water was wrung from the clouds in perfect time with a ripple of counter rotation. It rolled outwards like a wave from a stone dropped in a pond until it had reached the outermost edge of the massive storm. It was around that time when the water from the center first impacted the ground. The sound that dominated the city was unlike anything that Isaac had ever heard. It was like an infantry charge backed by the weight of the heavens and softened by the grace of Primatia.

  Alexander put up a small Reality Shield and hid behind it as the wall of water hit them, Lenna’s aura burned across her armor to help stave off the cold and to maybe keep some of her at least a little dry, Shamesh was too transfixed on the spectacle to even react, and Isaac reached out with his hand. “Stop.” He ordered the shadows of the rain that was bearing down on him. If he had thought it through, he would have realized that it was useless. The freezing raindrops exploded as they impacted their own shadows but continued towards him nonetheless. Instead of a hundred small raindrops he was instead impacted with a mist of ten thousand that had barely slowed down. He was thoroughly soaked in an instant.

  “Isaac, you need to get inside and warm up. Preferably before you get hypothermia.” Lenna instructed him and put her hand on his shoulder.

  Isaac nodded with a frown. “I know, but I want to watch.”

  Lenna sighed and started feeding him just a little of her healing magic to help keep him warm. She wouldn’t be able to keep it up until the spectacle was done but it would at least allow him to see whatever was going to happen next.

  “Thank you.” Isaac told her and looked back up at the sky to see another wall of water coming, only something was slightly different from the last one, almost like it was coming faster. “Take cover!” Isaac ordered the other three. He put up a wall of shadows in front of himself and cheated integrity into his shadows with a simple word: “Solidify.”

  A trillion small teardrops of ice impacted the city like a tsunami. The rain had apparently frozen on the way down but had left the cloud while still in liquid form. Shamesh joined Alexander in putting up a Reality Shield to save themselves from the impact but Lenna just put her hand up to protect her lenses. The wave of frozen rain hit with such uniformity that it felt like the storm had tried to shove her like a drunken bar fighter.

  Isaac’s shadows had barely enough time to solidify enough to stop the frozen rain before it hit him, as it was, Isaac felt the frozen rain sink into his shadows before they were stopped. He threw his shadows to the ground and let them disperse, leaving behind the frozen rain. “The storm stopped pulsing.” Isaac commented as all of a sudden the sky seemed to still. “It must be cold enough.”

  “Good, now, let’s get inside before you freeze solid.” Lenna told him and started pushing him towards the greenhouse. “Once you are warm, then we can play in the snow.”

  “You sound like my mother.” Isaac joked. No sooner had the words left his mouth, Isaac was hit with a wave of melancholy and a longing for a family that was impossibly far out of his reach. A family that knew him to be dead. A family that he didn’t remember but knew that he once had.

  Lenna caught the sudden change in his body language instantly. “Maybe one day, you will make me one.” She told him with a smirk clear in her voice. Alexander coughed and Lenna’s face flushed, she hadn’t even thought about having an audience when she had said it. Isaac chuckled. It was clear to her that it was only slightly forced and she took solace in that.

  “Yes. Hopefully soon, but not too soon. We still have quite a few places to see before we return home.” He replied with a warm smile. He then shivered violently. “If I survive the cold.”