Dust Eater Lightning

I hadn’t had a chance to test it yet, but…it was worth a shot.

Getting into a better position upon the Goliath’s back and holding firm with phantasmal limbs as it tried to shake me off, I reached into my Inventory and withdrew one of my precious Dust crystals. I’d chosen yellow after a moment of brief deliberation; red, its nearest competitor for what I had in mind, seemed unlikely to work on the Goliath, while green and blue would need for care to make work. No, of the Elements I had experience with, Lightning would probably be the most effective to start with.

I took a breath and slammed it to my chest, right over my heart. I felt my pattern adjust to take it in, responding as I’d learned from my grandmother’s gift, and the crystal slipped through my fingers to vanish beneath my skin. I had a moment’s pause to brace myself before the agony took hold, like I…well, like I was being electrocuted. My nerves went haywire, muscles jerked and twitched at the shock—and then it eased, my body taking it in.

Dust Eater—one of the two archaic forms of Dust manipulation my grandmother had provided me with. It was the process of infusing Dust into one’s own body, much like Dust Weaver was the act of sowing it into clothing; arts that had been mostly left behind by the more convenient and controllable methods of powder and rounds. Bodies would be strained, clothing would fray, and in both cases the process of replacing Dust as it was used was tedious or painful. But for me…

My heart glowed, light shining through my skin with each beat, pace quickening by the moment. In seconds, one flash all but faded into the next and trails of yellow light spread down my limbs in glowing patterns. My heart pounded in my chest faster then I’d ever felt before, beating so hard it seemed to hammer the inside of my ribs, but I felt power, too, running through my blood like a circuit on full blast.

And then it reached my Aura.

In an instant, it changed—white light giving way to yellow and then became lightning. As the power of the Dust crystal writhed over my skin, the shape my soul had taken shifted once more. It went wild, my second tail unraveling into a wicked lightning bolt while the rest became a storm, a vague shape with features written in blinding light and racing arcs. I leapt down from my resting place and back down to face the Goliath, ghostly limbs extending as I landed on a tusk, tails wrapping around it securely. And then, like a lightning bolt, I struck; energy of my tail flowed down into the bone of its tusk while clawed fingered extended towards a single glowing eye. It was as hard as it looked, more like the polished rock it resembled than anything vulnerable—but it was softer, at least compared to its armor, and I poured every watt of electricity I had straight into it even as I clawed at it fiercely. The power flowed from the core of my body in a stream that made my body sizzle and I had to bite down a scream, but I guided it into the creature’s flesh all the same.

With a clap of thunder, its eye burst, exploding into pus, steam, and a dark fluid that flowed down its mask even as the tusk I’d stood atop cracked from within. The Goliath screamed, for the first time sounding truly pained, and shook its head madly to try and throw me loose.