by Bo Savino
Chapter 22: A Whole New Game
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Ryssa might have been surprised to know that the scene she was participating in at the moment was the very same one Reggie had glimpsed in the Hall of Futures. She might have been surprised, but she wouldn’t have cared. At the moment, she was just tired—so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.
The hurricane that she and the storm elders were working on had weakened considerably before reaching warm waters where it hovered, picking up speed and strength. Those in the Hall of Storms waged a war designed to slow it down and push it away. They had been unable to push it further into the Atlantic two days prior, after it had ravaged its way through the Bahamas. The storm plugged determinedly along a path that would take it across Florida, over the Tampa Bay area, and across the beaches to make a direct hit on New Faery.
Ryssa looked at the area north of Tampa and a sob caught in her throat. Her foster mother and brother were there—along with all of her friends from school—and the bands of the storm fighting its way to the Fey were pounding away at them. Exactly when the three-dimensional model had taken on that reality for her, she couldn’t say. But she realized the storm had done little to slow down once it had made landfall across the state.
The outer bands of the storm had hit the Bay area. The elders had tried to push it further north, sending it on a path away from New Faery. But that put the bands directly over the home where Ryssa had grown up. And she found that quite unacceptable.
The realization caused her to open her heart, pouring her love and protection in waves toward her family and friends in the area. Of course, opening her heart made it a two-way street as far as the emotions of those on the mainland. She could feel their fear and worry pouring back at her, and she lashed out with anger transformed from their fear.
The winds of the storm slowed and moved slightly south, taking it back on a path to New Faery. Ryssa began to realize the best she could do was to strike at the speed of the winds and not worry about the path the storm was taking. The storm was so large it almost obscured the entire state. Only little spots of land were evident on the three-dimensional model.
The storm elders cursed, yelling at her to stay focused. Suddenly she realized what the problem was. She remembered back to the clinical detachment they had shown when reviewing what she had accidentally done to the previous storm. They hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about the lives it had affected when it tore across the central state. Their anger had been more about the control that had been taken away from them. Her resentment toward them grew, and she decided to take something else away from them—their detachment.
Ryssa looked across the model that represented a life she had been pulled from, only to be brought here and battered time after time by these elders who felt themselves above the petty emotions and turmoil of people barely a hand’s breadth away on a scale model that separated them from the reality of what they really faced. Her eyes met the gaze of her aunt, the Queen of the Unseelie Court, who observed the proceedings. Ryssa looked to the man standing next to her aunt, Kyellin Nightfall, and their eyes locked in understanding.
Ryssa detached, the way she had on the lake that day. She could see lines of power streaming from the storm elders as they fought to keep the hurricane from battering the shores of New Faery. There were also lines of emotion stemming from those in the Zombie Zone. Ryssa marveled at the strength in those lines. She would never again of think of those from the mortal world as having no power. They had a magic all their own—they just didn’t know how to use it. But in that moment, she did.
With both hands outstretched, she grabbed the lines of power from the storm elders and brought them together with the emotional lines of the humans on the mainland. The reaction from the elders was instantaneous. They recoiled, trying to back away from the fear being forced upon them. She made them feel the terror the humans were feeling. The only way for them to escape it was to make it go away.
The elders took a different tact in fighting the hurricane. They worked to reduce the winds instead of pushing them away. The hurricane lingered for a time, just north of New Faery, trying to rebuild its strength as it pressed against the barrier that kept it from the island. Ryssa saw the barrier push northward, forcing the storm to move with it. It took effort and time, but Ryssa saw the resolve put into it by the storm elders. Sweat beaded their foreheads as they worked together, propelled by the fear they were now connected to.
The power of that fear lessened in Ryssa’s hands as the storm inched away from the huge center of population. After a while, she let go of the lines and allowed them to settle back into their original places. The storm continued northward, still spreading torrents of rain and wind, but the backbone of its fury was broken.
She came back into her body and swayed where she stood. The tremendous effort she had put into making the storm elders see what they were doing had taken its toll. They watched her strangely, stepping back as though afraid of what she might do next. Ryssa laughed and they jumped. They obviously didn’t know that every ounce of her energy was being put into standing upright. She had nothing left.
“How did you do that?” the Queen was asking, but the voice sounded as though it was from far away. “And why?”
“How?” Ryssa’s head was swimming. What had she done? She shook her head to clear it, but the dizziness only got worse. “I d-don’t know—why?” She shrugged, the single movement sending her off-balance.
Kyellin Nightfall rushed from across the room, catching her as she fell.
Ryssa looked at him with confusion.
“I had to make them understand,” she whispered as the blackness took her. “I mean really understand—”
