Page 354 -- XLI.

Chapter Forty-One: ‘When the Thunder doth roll...’
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Hector watched his metal break apart. Truck-sized chunks of iron circulated around Karkash, all connected by a web of lightning, crackling with emergent energy.

They went spiraling toward Stoker’s fog.

Hector rushed to annihilate everything, but he couldn’t get to it all fast enough, and Stoker was forced out of his cloud by a tumbling iron boulder.

Stoker kept making more fog, but it was an obvious stream behind him now, no longer obscuring his position. Everyone knew what was coming next. Hector raised two spires in Stoker’s defense, and when the lightning struck through the air, it was undoubtedly more powerful in every way--brighter, thicker, certainly louder. It crashed into the spires, making the dirt around them explode into dust, and the ensuing sonic boom nearly ruptured Hector’s eardrums.

The force of the impact sent Stoker toppling head over foot through the dirt, away from the supposed safety of the spires. So Hector made more, and he made them larger, sturdier. They took a half-second longer, which was precious time in this fight, but they absorbed the electricity better.

Karkash shot up into the air and rained lightning down from above. The sparking branches were so numerous that they formed a kind of cage around the spires, and Karkash increased the voltage even further. Stoker was trapped, and the electricity closed in, lashing against his body, making him convulse and sending him to his knees as his flesh began to smolder and burn.

Hector made to increase the size of the spires even more, but Karkash apparently predicted as much and abruptly ceased his attack on Stoker in order to focus on Hector instead.

He barely made half a spire before the lightning smashed through it, making the ground explode directly in front of him. He went flying. His hearing was gone, ears bleeding from the deafening boom, and he hit the dirt again with a numb thud.