Divine Entity IV: Stormfront

The storm sang to her, sang to the very fiber of her being, surrounded her body in a cocoon of majestic sound that reverberated through her soul. She danced under the cloud-blackened sky singing out her joy, and was thrilled when the sky answered her praise with one of its own. The air thrummed with its answer, with its power, it whisked her up as though it were a tidal wave and dashed her against the rocky shore of desire. It was love. It was anguish. It was magnificent. She reached for the sky, extending her arms to their limits and the response was immediate. The warriors hurled their spears of light over and over again, they lanced across the sky leaving after-images in her vision, green and blue. The rain drove against her face, soaking every part of her, from the tips of her fingers to the soles of her feet and everything in between. The rain, the wind, the lightning and the thunder, all at her beck and call, all lived to serve her, all danced at her whim, for she was the Divine Entity of Storms. She was their goddess, their mistress, their commander and their mother. She was everything.

He struggled forward through the storm, trudging through the mud as the freezing rain knifed into the exposed parts of his body chilling him to the core. Head bowed against wind he marched on, determined to reach his destination no matter the obstacles in his way. Briefly he looked up chancing the blinding rain and what he saw astonished him, there in the heart of the ferocious storm stood a girl on a hill, or rather danced being the more appropriate term. Though the more he stared the more he realized that he knew this strange girl, even if his eyes could barely make her out his soul surely recognized her. They had parted more than five years ago, but she hadn't changed a bit.
"Veidra," Tune mumbled to himself, "Only she is foolish enough to be out in a storm this horrendous." Though the more he thought about it the more he came to realize that she was probably the one who had created it and upon coming to this realization he silently chuckled to himself. "Only she is foolish enough," he mumbled again. He bowed his head and plodded onward to his new destination.

"Tune," she spoke softly as he crested her hill.

The storm was vicious where he first saw her, but it was absolutely rabid up here. It tore at his clothes, as if angered by his meager and thoroughly drenched protection. His hair whipped into a frenzy by the storm stung and slashed at his face, though, it seemed to focus on his eyes, nearly finishing what the driving rain had started.

"Veidra," he screamed with all his might over the howling wind. Though he could barely make out his own words apparently she could hear them without any difficulty for she turned and spoke to him.

"Tune," she said softly again, "Why are you here?"

He had expected her words to be ripped from her lips like his were, but instead the wind had the opposite effect, it caressed her like a gentle lover and brought him the words with startling clarity. Her voice was like a thousand ringing bells, but instead of being harsh and discordant it was a beautiful melody; the only thing he could liken it to at the moment was a surprise sunshower or golden honey dripping with the perfect sweetness. It flowed over Tune, wrapping him in it's warmth, cascading down over his mind and filling him with a sense of lethargy. She spoke his name again, though, this time it held an icy edge. The warmth left him and was replaced with a chilling coil around his heart, snapping him out of his pleasant reverie. He had forgotten that though her surface might seem calm and cool, she was a seething, roiling mass of bitter words and a vast power to back them up. She was not one to be taken lightly, his sister, not lightly at all. Most of all though, he remembered that she absolutely, positively hated being kept waiting and hated having to repeat herself, which she had already done once now.

He took a moment of order his thoughts and - though he would admit it to no one - to still his racing heart, then he spoke, " Our brother, Forte, is out of control. He is currently hiding out in his birthplace, the Forest of Fire, which the king has decreed to be hazardous and therefore has sent me to seek it's destru--"

"I care not for your finely rehearsed speech that was no doubt written by the foolish king himself," Veidra spat. "I care for the truth and only the truth. You should know that by now." Softer, as though speaking to herself she added, "You Tune, of all people, should know."

"Fine! You want the truth, then I'll give you the truth. I think that the Forest of Fire is blight. I think that our brother is a danger to himself and my country. He and that blasted forest of his is a threat to our way of life and must be destroyed."

"When did you become so blinded by promises that you can't even see when you're being used?"
"I am not the one who is blind my sister, it is you who are blind. Blinded by the old ways, the days of glory for our kind. Well I'm here to tell you that those days are dead, dead and long gone, never to be resurrected."

"The old ways will never die so long as one of us believes in them and I will always believe; even when you, a dog of the king, finally strikes me down, I will believe." With that said she turned her back on her treacherous brother, not wanting to look at the once beautiful face now marred with hate; but also because she did not want Tune to see her, the mistress of storms, who is moved by nothing but power, shedding tears for both her brothers, her once noble brother Tune now turned by hate and greed and Forte, the quiet one, the one who abhorred bloodshed, who would now be forced to arms against his own brother and eventually slay him. It was too much for her and she silently wept, the storm increasing it's ferocity to match the turmoil within.

Tune stared at her for a little while longer, starred at her back, which she thought she could hide behind, but he still noticed, noticed the tremors that shook her shoulders. He knew she was crying. He knew why, but he had a mission to accomplish. He had to destroy the forest and it's guardian, otherwise the assassins would keep coming after him. 'Someday you'll understand Veidra. Someday you'll thank me,' he thought.

As if in answer to his thoughts she spoke one word, "No." With that one word his face hardened and he spun on his heel and marched off to his original destination.