River vs Barrowill

He slapped a hand the size of a big cookie tray on the floor and let out a low, rumbling sound like nothing I’d ever heard this side of an amplified bass guitar. It was music. You couldn’t have written it in musical notation any more than you could write the music of a thunderstorm, or write lyrics to the song of a running stream. But it was music nonetheless.
Power like nothing I had ever encountered surged out from that impact, a deep, shuddering wave that passed visibly through the dust in the air. The ceiling and the walls and the floor sang in resonance with the note and impact alike, and Barrowill’s psychic assault was swept away like a sand castle before the tide. Connie’s eyes flooded with color, changing from pure, empty whiteness back to a blue as deep and rich as a glacial lake, and the humanity came flooding back into her features. The sense of wild panic in the air suddenly vanished, and for another timeless instant, everything, everything in that night went utterly silent and still.
Holy.
Crap.
I’ve worked with magic for decades, and take it from me, it really isn’t very different from anything else in life. When you work with magic, you rapidly realize that it is far easier to disrupt than to create, far more difficult to mend than to destroy. Throw a stone into a glass-smooth lake, and ripples will wash over the whole thing. Making waves with magic instead of a rock would have been easy.
But if you can make that lake smooth again—that’s one hell of a trick.
That surge of energy didn’t attack anything or anybody. It didn’t destroy Barrowill’s assault.
It made the water smooth again.
Strength of a River in His Shoulders opened his eyes, and his fury made them burn like coals in the shadows—but he simply crouched, doing nothing.


Brief Cases, Bigfoot on Campus, Page 209-210