THUNDERING JUSTICE!
This is a snippet of a very old story of mine that I currently have no plans to rework - I'm putting it here to answer a question from #SFFChat about religion. You can enjoy it as a bonus update this month!
Borealins at prayer were much different to any other religion. Other priests would intone the sacred words and bow their heads in reverence, but there was a reason the Amperion temple had constructed this musical rooftop in the first place. Other gods smiled down upon their followers - Borealis did not. So the Borealins made noise.
'Roaring water filled these halls before!' Gyllon roared, slamming his sword and shield against the roof and causing it to shake and rattle thunderously. 'Now I shall fill it with metal and stone!' He felt electricity raising the hairs on his neck in the next swing, and as the sword connected it met with a flash of lightning. Gyllon was sent tumbling backwards, breathing heavily as he sat up to examine the damage.
Where the roof had been a rusting, somewhat dented tangle of iron, it was now a molten clump of metal dangling from one thick sprue. Gyllon stood, energised, and thumped on the roof again.
'Is that the best you've got?' he shouted into the sky. 'I thought you had power! False God! Fakery! Trickster!'
He leapt the molten gap and his sword struck, and another bolt of lightning shattered a portion of the stonework as it twisted the metal upwards and outwards, forming a twisted iron sculpture.
Still not enough, he realised. Gyllon knelt, already exhausted.
'You're toying with me,' he sighed, the realisation hitting him. 'You don't need to prove your power, you're a god. I am less than a dust mote passing your eye.
'But what about the aspects? Aspects you gave us, you showed us! We heard the message: this is what I am. This is what I can be for you. The aspect of flowing wind: shifts in power, impermanence. And yet you secure your old house, concretely. Locked out, able only to look in. Are you so scared of being temporary?'
Three bolts struck, one after the other. Gyllon was buffeted between each one and sprawled against the roof, feeling the heat of the red-hot metal nearby. He got to his knees.
'If you're so angry,' he continued, 'Why not simply kill me? Or do you have so few followers now that you cannot afford to spare one for the flames?'
This time a bolt struck the side of the building. The outer wall cracked, the front half subsiding as the middle crumbled. Gyllon laughed bitterly.
'I ran from you,' he said. 'I ran from the aspect of thundering justice, I refused to fight in the war. I refused to die for you then, Borealis - do you refuse me the right to die now?'
Lightning struck right in front of him, a line of bolts which sliced the metal roof in half. Gyllon tumbled down onto the stonework, groaning as he got to his feet. He picked up the sword.
'I ran from my washed-up god-' he groaned as lightning struck directly, the ground cracking beneath him. He continued, 'and you can't even bring yourself to curse me! You give me armour, weapons, you give me chance after chance! Where's your justice, Thunderer? Why not strike me down?' This time the whole roof lit up. The rest of the metal collapsed and Gyllon felt a white heat on his back, as the lightning struck him once more.
'Do you run from justice?' Gyllon cried, raising his sword. This time, the lightning struck his sword and he brought it down on the stonework. The roof split in half down its length, rocking inwards and turning Gyllon's footing very unstable.
'What do I tell the people?' he asked. 'That I worship a coward, who can't bear to look at those who love Him? That i do what's right, despite my god's reluctance to see this injustice? What happened to thundering justice? Did you run from that too? Borealis, god who runs. God who hides!' He raised his sword again.
'God who would rather play in the meadow than answer a call for help!'
Lightning struck the sword and Gyllon stabbed it downwards, deep into the roof.
The electricity crackled over the building, leaping over the walls and darting up the statutes. It disappeared inside, climbing over the pipes and hydraulics and teasing the tapestries and finery. It ran its tendrils over the enormous double doors.
And then everything collapsed.
The statutes were the first to topple, the various aspects seeming to roar and scream as they fell. They fell against the doors, cracking them and collapsing them, clearing the path, but by then the walls were crumbling, stonework tumbling from the top collapsing floors and battering support beams.
Gyllon fell. He fell for a moment, stomach lurching as the air rushed past, but he stopped short.
Held aloft by a grey hand formed of violent storm clouds.
Borealis was unfathomable. Beyond the mind-numbing size of the hand he sat on, Gyllon made out the crackling lightning eyes illuminating the horizon. He stared, dumbstruck, but found his voice as he stood.
'So you do listen,' he said.
'Most of you are not so insistent.' Borealis's voice boomed inside Gyllon's head, so loud he staggered.
'We're dying,' he said weakly. 'We're dying and you're doing nothing. Can you understand why I run?'
'I cannot help,' Borealis rumbled. 'I can only point you in the right direction, and perhaps give you the strength to weather the worst storms.'
'But not forever,' Gyllon said with a smile. In the distance, Borealis nodded.
'You fell,' the god continued, 'but through your faith you find yourself arisen once more. You are an avatar of my wrath. Rise, and accept godlike power.'
The stormclouds gathered overhead and suddenly Gyllon was standing before a wall of grey cloud, the shapeless mass of cloud the chest of borealis. He stared up in awe, and then down at the world below. The building collapsed in slow motion, rocks tumbling at a fraction of normal speed. He sighed, and shook his head.
'I'm not worthy of such power,' he said. 'I wouldn't know what to do with it. But if you allow me to fall, I'll show you how a lowly priest of the flowing wind rises.'
Borealis followed Gyllon's gaze with a curious expression. Then his eyes glinted and the clouds appeared to smile, as he roared, 'I'll do more than that - I'll get you down there even faster! Show these heathens true thundering justice!'
Gyllon was enveloped in the folds of darkening clouds as Borealis reared up, feeling electricity crackle over him as the wind rushed through the gods closed fist. He closed his eyes, feeling the heat of the lightning all around him. And then the heat was inside him and around him and it was him. He felt the wind rushing, felt himself stretch.
Borealis let go.
From the ground, Margaret gasped as a titanic shaft of lightning earthed itself in the still-solid remains of the Great Funnel, the redirector which took the rainwater from the musical roof and focused it into the sewers. A whole new, putrid river wound its way southeast of Amperion, in large part thanks to the Borealin priests. Of course, with Huldin's rise and takeover of the courthouse, that river was fast drying up.
But this lightning strike! It melted a portion of the funnel, blew out the debris from the collapse, and sent a hydraulic reservoir collapsing into the space.
Water tumbled through, coursing with electricity. It hit the sewer.