Check out parts one and two here!

2.

The lightbulb in Trent’s hand explodes.

He stares as the four tiny pieces of glass embedded in his palm. He barely feels the sting. The beads of crimson start sparking as soon as they touch skin, crackling and hissing before evaporating into red smears on his dark skin.

Hmm. It’s bad that he’s numb, right? That’s a bad thing. He knows that much. And blood isn’t supposed to act like that…

There are others approaching. Four of them. He can’t see them because all he sees is his hand, but he can feel the flashes of energy in their bodies. There are lights in them, in their lungs, in their legs and in their lives, all concentrated in a bright crackling mass of sparks in their hearts and skulls. Their brains are beautiful things.

The vessel’s brain is not beautiful.

The vessel’s brain is a stronghold for chaos. While the sparks in the others' flicker sporadically like candles in the wind, the vessel’s sparks are more like many infernos raging together into one body that acts merely as a conduit. Mortals were never meant to contain sparks of this magnitude. The Energy revels at its brief escape, searching for more “bulbs of light” and writhing restlessly, angrily, when it finds none.

One of the others approaches. In the Energy’s visual plane, the sparks that make up the other’s arm reach out tentatively. Concern, the vessel realizes fretfully. The Energy in the vessel purrs, waiting for the sparks get closer so it can meld to them, so it can spread to the other bodies and consume all the sparks and JOIN THE ROILING WAVES OUTSIDE–

Trent jerks away from the Rowan’s concerned hand with a gasp. Touching is bad; touching is so very bad. God, Rowan finally trusts him, and Trent had almost killed him. And why does he keep calling himself a vessel?

Trent can’t be here right now. He can’t, not with the molten electricity thrumming like a live wire under his skin, pulsing and writhing and demanding.

He glances around wildly. He’s in the Den’s run-down living room. They were watching a centuries-old movie about a musical high school. His powers just blew up the lightbulb he’d been using to try to center himself, and... he was something else.

His friends surround him; Seb looking like he’s seconds away from offering a hug, Lynn no doubt sensing Trent’s panic, Cora frowning with her feathers puffed up and Rowan with soft eyes that express a sad understanding. Trent’s heart hiccups; he wishes he could lean closer.

Rowan somehow looks like he knows exactly what’s going on, but he can’t know. Can he? He opens his mouth to speak.

Trent runs.

His powers roar in protest like a live thing, straining to suck away the electrical signals that make up his friends. He’s a vibrating water balloon, latex stretched taut and seconds from bursting and oh, no, they’re followinghim. Of course, they’re following him, they’re his friends, and they’re concerned. But he’s running from them so they don’t die.

It’s never been this bad before.

Normally, lightning storms are a challenge, but they’re manageable. He can usually get through them with his friends being completely oblivious of his powers’ desire to electrocute them all to death before joining the storm. Keeping a lid on the energy humming in his body hasn’t been this much of a struggle since he was a kid.

This storm is worse than any he’s ever experienced. He’s never been anything but wary of lightning storms all his life. This is the first one that he’s actually terrified of.

Then again, he’d also never thought that his powers were sentient before. He’d assumed his dad’s nonsense about the lightning being spirits of angry beings was only superstition. Yet, how can he explain this? Trent had gone numb. He didn’t just lose control; the electricity blew up a lightbulb and forced him to take a backseat in his own mind. His powers were controlling him… and he’d nearly killed Rowan.

Rowan, who had slowly started to trust Trent after months of being terrified of the Den. Rowan, who’d taken to sitting silently with Trent on the nights when the insomnia kept them both awake. Rowan, whose rare smiles and dry sense of humor were becoming necessities in Trent’s life. Rowan.

Trent’s feet pound up two flights of worn stairs to the roof. A voice in his head tells him that a guy with lightning powers should not be going out into a lightning storm. He ignores it and is struck by lightning seconds after walking outside.

He barely even notices it happening. There’s a bright flash and a loud boom, and then all of a sudden, he’s on the ground, being pelted by rain and feeling like his bones are splitting open to leak out everything that makes him whole. And he’s so tempted to just… let it happen…

The others appear in the visual field again, daring to exist in this presence with those delicious sparks flitting happily within their mortal confines. An arc of Energy slices towards them, delighted to reunite the sparks with their benefactor, but it is interrupted. The Energy dissipates harmlessly in the air, dispelled by a wall of water.

“Trent, stop! You have to get a hold of it!”

The other calls the vessel’s name, voice loud to be heard over the might of the thundering waves in the sky. The Energy does not listen. It raises the vessel from the ground and hovers, undeterred by the mortal construct of gravity. The vessel’s eyes burn white from the sheer amount of light finally allowed to flow freely without pathetic moral constraints. The Energy deigns to gaze down at the others. It is irritated to realize it must deal with these sparklings before it can join the forces above. One of the others is in front, the remaining three a few paces behind.

“Listen to me! It’s Rowan! I know you’re still in there, just… hang on!”

The vessel stirs at this name, the emotional response to the name nearly strong enough to wrest control again. The Energy is displeased. The other nearly freed the vessel. The other cannot be forgiven.

The Energy calls a sister from the sky to smite the other, but he dispels her sparks just as easily as he had done with the wall of water earlier. The Energy realizes that the little droplets in the air, the rain, is no longer hitting the surface the others are standing on. Instead, the water is… hovering.

“Trent, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m going to try something. Um, sorry in advance.”

The other is planning something. The energy looks to the sky to summon another sister and stop him in his tracks, but the vessel resists. It is exuding something between hope and tentative relief. The water in the air quivers, and the other controlling it shifts his feet.

These are the only warnings.

The vessel is submerged, surrounded, somehow sinking and floating all at once. There is nothing but water, and a gentle pressure at the vessel’s lips. A sister reaches down from the sky to connect and the Energy receives nothing but pain.

And suddenly, everything goes white.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.