Book One – Chapter 1

The first strikes disturbed the chains around them; those chains were forced closer in turn. More fragments were driven into the same narrowing region, more chains compressed alongside one another, and every rupture increased the likelihood of another breaking through the same course. Separate bolts ceased to separate. The distance between them shortened. So did the darkness. White afterimages overlapped before Yves’ sight could clear, and within the fraction of another blink, even those intervals disappeared. The individual strikes thickened into streams of terrifying continuity; not one enduring bolt, not rupture following rupture, but bolts adding upon one another. New ruptures entered paths that had not yet spent the violence of the last. They reinforced the same course, forcing more light through a route already saturated by it. Burst accumulated upon burst, chain upon chain, until their individual violence compounded faster than it could dissipate, until the succession merged into a single sustained structure of light, exponentially potent — the lightning was building itself into a beam.

Yves had seconds before those converging bolts tightened beyond anything he could deflect and dodge. To disperse them, he made the shields both protection and diversion. He stopped placing them only where the lightning struck. Instead, he threw out an array of separate constructions. Five barrier flared high above him. Another five formed far to the right. Nine more snapped into existence downslope and just as many farther to the left, each detached from Yves, from Midnight and from the others. For one suspended instant they hung around the ascent like scattered pieces of luminous bait, bright knots of energy against the desolation of the dune.