Nigkala Tales Pt. 20: Stormy Weather

Nigkala Tales Pt. 20: Stormy Weather

Bringing Life to Death Valley

Thanks to my editor kenjisato. Also, to LanguageTool. Combined, they put me right. Any problems left all belong to me.

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I had spent nearly two months camping in Death Valley National Park. When out of sight of others, I caused air currents to blow down from on high, cooling me. I also carried a lot of water. I spent half of each day meditating and sensing all around me, even into the air above and the rock below. I had learned there was an underground stream, full of earthen chi, and the air had some chi as well. But most important to me, was that there was no spiritual presence here. That made it suitable for a place to plant the bunker.

I returned home and spent the next month studying my magic books to determine how to make Death Valley, the bunker's new home. Early on, I came to the realization that the larger the volume I bound it to, the better chance it had of transplanting. However, the needed power went up as fast as the volume did. I developed a ritual that would provide an enchanted framework to hang the transplanting on, that would fade as it took hold. Another factor was the time needed. I would need to hold the magic for days. The last part was the trickiest - I needed to control all this from its viewpoint. This meant I had to merge with it for the transfer. I felt this last would somehow change me, but I had no idea how.

I spent several weeks discussing this with Filipe, and he finally convinced me I needed to try, and that he would love me no matter what happened. With his love fortifying me, I teleported into the place I selected at midnight. I had three talismans with me: An's, Inanna's, and the one with the bunker. I was otherwise naked. Before coming, I had deliberately eaten extra for several days, as I knew I would be fasting for the ritual. I started the airflow to cool me off and went to sleep until dawn. I placed Inanna's symbol between my breasts, and An's talisman in my lap as I sat, and before me lay the bunker's talisman. We were directly over the underground stream, and on a large dune.

I began by focusing on the bunker, and feeding it chi. Soon the sand about it stirred. I fed it more chi, and I began to summon An's power into me. I also called Inanna's power into me to strengthen my body to withstand the pressures this ritual would bring. Soon, I had sparks coming from my nipples. I was now ready to begin the transplanting ritual. I contacted the mind of the bunker, as tiny as it was, and told it to gather the power flowing as sparks from my body. It caused the sand that was swirling to rise up, and soon they met the sparks. Where they did, the sand was transformed into glass, with a little chi within. At that point, I worked to shift my viewpoint, so I could control things more directly. As I did, my awareness became sand and glass, and I lost awareness of my body as being mine.

As the sand flowed about, and the tiny glass shards flowed, I sought more power to entice the rest of my spirit from the talisman. I knew what I needed to do, to free myself, but I also knew I needed to anchor myself to the land first. To do this, I needed a lot more power, and there was that other providing power. I demanded more power from it, and it supplied more power. With that power, I caused more sand to become part of myself, and I sent some to become glass shards. This was going slow, and I knew the body was prepared, so I doubled the power I demanded, and then doubled again and again. With the increase in power, I could control more sand, and I could send more sand to become glass.

By this time, I noticed that sand that would have hit the body while being turned to glass, now seemed to pass through that part of the body. Also, other parts of the body were beginning to light up, as well and the large glass object the body held. The other object seemed to glow and pulse, but did not spark. I knew that its part in this process did not include my sand, so I limited the sand that hit the body to do so, only where it sparked. Once I felt the process was going smoothly, I doubled my demand for more power. The body responded by having sparks cover more of it. I increased my influence out farther, and I was now able to contain the entire dune.

I knew that the more I controlled, the more likely I would be successful at gaining a new body, so I doubled my need for power and the body responded. This time, nearly the entire body was sparking, yet it did not seem to be nearing its limit, so I doubled my need again. This caused the entire body to spark, then change shape into a ball. The glowing thing seemed to be pulsing, but showed no sign of distress. The other sparking thing seemed to be sending a lot of sparks into the ball. I continued to watch the pulsing thing, and if it seemed steady, I doubled my need. The ball seemed to double in size, and I was able to send a lot more sand through it. By now, the ball had expanded to cover a large area of my central dune, but it also was fragmentary. It was as if there were now larger sparks bouncing back and forth all over it. It also went high, so I sent some sand high. I lost count of how many times I doubled my need, but the pulsing glow was steady.

I was able to double my demand a few times more, before the glowing thing started to be unsteady. I then backed off my latest demand, and the glow steadied. I knew that this was the limit of power I could get from this source. By now, the source contained many dunes, and went quite high. It also seemed to have incorporated the glass into its sparking, rather than make new glass. I knew this was when I needed to use these glass bits to take hold of this dune, and many others, so that I would become attached to the land here. So I began the slow process. I used the knowledge somehow stored in that ball to enact a ritual. While I did not understand it, I seemed to gain a little awareness from it.

After a while, I felt myself bonding to the land, even as my former prison seemed to be losing the ability to hold me. Suddenly, it shattered into tiny bits of glass. These tiny bits were sucked up into the ball and were spat out, cleansed of magic. I did not know what magic was, but I knew my prison was no more, and the glass that made it was not a part of me. About the same time, I sensed it weakening, so I sent it some of my chi, and it revived. Sometime later, I felt the process near completion. I then began the last part of the ritual to return us fully to our own bodies, and I felt my awareness dwindle.

I was no longer the bunker, no longer the sand. I was now myself, and the rituals had been completed. I relaxed a bit, allowing myself to come down from delivering all that power. That is when I realized there was some kind of thunderstorm about. I looked about to see how big it was, and I saw it was clearly several miles in diameter. It wasn't until I looked down that I realized I was not on the ground. I must have been a mile or more high over the valley. Trying to orient myself, I looked all over for something not storm or sand. Eventually I spotted something glowing, not sparking. I willed myself closer, and was instantly there.

It was my holy symbol, floating next to An's and pulsing strongly. But my body was nowhere in sight. I started looking elsewhere in the storm. It wasn't until I had looked over a hundred square miles for any sign of my body that I realized I was still well within the storm. How big was it? Since Inanna's symbol seemed to indicate I was okay, I decided to see if I could see how big the storm was. Measuring distance was difficult, but I could tell the storm encompassed all of Death Valley, which I knew was over a hundred miles long. It even seemed to extend the same distance past each end. What I knew of such storms, told me it was likely as wide as long. I went back to where the holy symbol pulsed, and thought about this. That was when I noticed the wind. It was circular.

Stunned, I realized this was no ordinary storm, but some kind of hurricane, centered here at Death Valley. There wasn't much water in the air, but there was an enormous amount of sand and dust. With all the friction generated, it was no wonder there was also a huge area of lightning. My ritual caused this. I just knew it.

I had to stop it. The ritual was as complete as it was going to get. I calmed my mind, and set aside the worry over my body. I focused my air sense to cover the entire storm at once. I wish I had thought to try this earlier when trying to size the storm. Pushing that thought aside, I focused on the storm as a whole. I soon learned it was larger than I thought, but I could not tell very well, as I had little experience. But ignoring that, I looked to see where I could change things to reduce the storm's power. I brought in cooler air from high up into the center, and had it blow into the eye and cool it as it went out into the rest of the storm. I also changed the winds to slow and also to blow more out to the edges. The slower winds dropped a lot of the sand, but I knew all the dust would be up for days.

I could push my control for only a short time before I had to rest. I had no bath to rest my body in, and I wasn't sure what my body was doing, so I rested extra, so I would not hurt myself. Oddly, that time resting seemed to calm the lightning. Once I felt ready, I pushed again to reduce the energy of the storm. When I felt I was running low on energy, I rested again. After three more cycles, I noticed the sun was rising, yet sleep seemed to elude me. After eight more cycles, the sun set. The storm was smaller, but still much larger than Death Valley. I did my best to continue.

As the rest cycles became days, and with no sleep, I could barely think. Yet, I continued. Finally, I could endure no more. The storm was maybe fifty miles wide, and most of the sand had fallen back to the ground. My awareness faded, and I dreamed.

I was being watched. The watcher saw my efforts to reduce the storm, but also saw my ability diminish. When it saw I had lost consciousness, it sent out a stream of energy into me. My stresses, as shown by the holy symbol, became less, but I did not become conscious. It sent more, and saw my stress go down more, but I seemed to be in an even deeper state of unconsciousness. It tried again, and then it noticed that along with my stress going down, the lightning seemed to recede.

It continued to feed me energy, and the lightning seemed to concentrate around the talismans. When it was small enough, the watcher sent sand to absorb some of that lightning energy to calm it even more. As it did, molten sand began to rain. It also reduced the lightning from over a hundred feet across into a ball less than ten feet across. Then it recognized the ball, and it sent out a thought, 'Pull in your power.' It did this, not in words, but rather with basic emotions and concepts of survival. Even so, the ball understood, and it slowly did so. Once the ball was less than four feet across, it started changing shape.

At this point, the talismans moved. Inanna's talisman moved to the surface on one side, where its pulsing became stronger, and the lightning started to sync to it. An's entered it, and continued to spark inside. The shape seemed to be more cylindrical, and it settled to the ground. The sand it touched liquefied, and depressed at the center, allowing the lightning to descend into the dune. An's talisman increased its flow of energy to the cylinder, even as the melting sand took energy away from the cylinder. Inanna's talisman settled on the top, and seemed to be influencing the shape of the lightning, and pushing it into the dune. Soon, the dune swallowed the cylindrical shape, enclosing the lightning and the symbols within a shell of glass. The sand appeared to boil as if it were water as the glass bubble sank.

The watcher continued to feed it energy, but sensed the lightning diminishing. Finally, the sparks went out, and the molten glass solidified. Yet the body, that replaced the lightning, remained comatose. It knew this being was linked to itself, but it was concerned. It knew it was barely aware of itself, but it knew that part of its awareness was because the other embraced its life with its own awareness. So it reached out to embrace it with what little is had. It saw that the energies within the body seemed to be having difficulty. Knowing it once suffered something similar, it tried to suggest the being do what it had done before. It felt the being begin, but it seemed too weak, so it sent more energy. It was careful to be gentle, and let the other's awareness guide the process rather than try to do something it did not understand.

The watcher felt the energies slowly realigning to have a more harmonious flow, and as they did, it sensed the stress was also reduced. Soon, it felt another change in the body's awareness. It was now free of stress, and the energy flowed smoothly, but seemed to be quite busy. It pulled back all but the slow feeding of energy while it waited. The awareness quieted for a time, and then it seemed the body woke.

And my dream ended. It was also completely dark. I needed light, and suddenly, there was a soft glow from my chest. I was encased in glass at least an inch thick. I realized I was not breathing, and did not seem to have a need to breathe either. I also realized I had a body. After my initial panic at waking up entombed, my mind accepted that I was alive without breath, but I also felt a trickle of energy from nearby. If I was to do anything, I needed to get out of this tomb I was in. I needed to go up, as that was the likeliest direction of exit. Suddenly, I felt movement, and then I realized sand was flowing down past the glass. I emerged like a bubble from the side of a dune. Above me, I saw a star-filled sky. I instinctively tried to sit up. When I did, the glass shattered into a billion pieces, floating in the air like a mist. From my vagina, a glass dildo floated and sparked. The glass dust swirled about us before spreading out to cover the dune where it sank.

With the feel of air, I suddenly took a breath. It was unsteady, as if I had drowned, but after a few breaths, it steadied back to normal. When it did, I felt the feeding of energy stop, with a sense that something was completed satisfactorily. I searched for the feeling, and soon realized the thought came from the entire area of the dunes. As I searched, the dildo stopped sparking, and fell into my lap, and I realized it was An's talisman. I also noticed Inanna's symbol was providing the soft light. But as I looked up at the night sky, I realized I no longer needed it, and the symbol stopped glowing, but remained secure between my breasts. Curiously, it seemed brighter than I thought it should be.

I looked at it more closely, and realized it was polished to a mirror-like sheen. There was not enough light to see the welds, and when I felt for them, I felt a smoothness where I expected welds. I then looked at An's talisman, and I saw it had changed from a jagged fulgurite into a smooth, phallic shape. A shape I recognized immediately as An's. I knew then that he assisted me somehow, and that he intended I use his talisman also in a new way. When I brought it close to my breast, the tip suddenly lit up with weak sparks. This talisman could now also act as a violet sex-toy-wand. I had a feeling it would give a rather large shock to me.

My eyes looked back up at the heavens, and I realized I saw the Milky Way in all its glory. All the dust had settled, and the air was unbelievably clear. I sat mesmerized at the beauty above me. I must have watched for over an hour, when I was startled by hearing my name. I leaped up, turned, and faced the person who had come upon me while I was staring at the stars.

"Oh! Jiao-long! Hello." I relaxed a bit.

He jumped back, clearly startled.

"Is something wrong?"

"You moved so fast, you surprised me."

"Huh? You're faster than me, unless I tap An's power, and I am not doing that now."

"Yet, you did. I have been looking for you in this desert for nearly a week. I could sense your aura was somewhere here, but the site's power masks yours almost completely, as they are so similar."

"You were searching for me? Why, has something happened?"

"Yes. Several months ago, I was hit by lightning while I was inside my home. There was no storm, and my divinations indicated you were somehow involved. Yet nothing came of it, until about a month ago. Instead of being hit by lightning, I seemed to be generating a lot of static electricity, and getting little shocks all the time. Again, my divinations indicated you were involved. So I came to your world, and went to your home, only to find you gone. Yet, I was still being shocked.

"I did some divinations, and I got a direction that seemed to pass through a supernatural hurricane. When I went sideways and tried again, it was clear. You are somehow in it, near the center. It was over a thousand miles in diameter, and at its core it seemed to be constant lightning about six hundred miles in diameter. While the government sent probes into it, if it got near the lightning, it was struck, and instantly burned out. Radar could not penetrate it. Any manned probe was so buffeted by the wind and sand, their engines would fail, and they had to abort or crash. The only things that could see the center were satellites.

"So I waited outside the hurricane. After a week, it began to shrink. My divinations could tell you were the one doing it, yet they could not find you. All that lightning was clearly interfering with my spells, as did the sand still in the air. When the storm finally cleared, there were no marks on the sand, save from the wind. My divinations indicated you were still about, but hidden by the site's power and its similarity to you. About half an hour ago, I did a divination that was different. You were no longer hidden, and it led me here."

"I was over six hundred miles in diameter? No wonder I could not find myself."

"Huh? I said the lightning was that large."

"Yes. Somehow, I became lightning in a ritual of power. I still don't know how long it has been, as I have lost track of time. You say it has been about a month? Wow."

"You became lightning by a ritual?"

"No. The ritual was to transplant a site of power stolen by a mage. The mage is now in An's hands, but I needed to do something about the stolen site, as I was sort of involved in creating it."

"You are full of surprises."

"Yeah. In this ritual, I surprised myself a number of times. Becoming an expanding ball of lightning was just one of them."

"I think we should leave, as there will be people trying to figure out what happened here."

"Agreed. I don't want to be found and be questioned by the government for the rest of my life." I then followed his tracks to wherever he came from.

Jiao-long stared for several seconds as I walked away. "Stop!"

I stopped, and turned around. "Huh? I thought you wanted to leave?"

"I do, but where are your tracks?"

I looked down, and realized I was not leaving any tracks. I recognized what was happening, so my lips curled up into a grin. "Oh, that. Remember what I could do on your lake?" I saw him slowly nod, and then suddenly his eyes got big. "Yes, the sand supports me." I then noticed his prints between us, and recalled I felt I could do something about moving sand. So I willed the prints between us to disappear and leave behind only the markings of the wind.

"Woah! What just happened to my tracks?"

"I seem to have some ability with sand now."

"What next?"

"I look forward to finding out. But let's get something to eat first. Why don't you lead, and I'll erase the tracks."