STRINGS AND STORMS

First rule of puppet mastery: your strings are only as strong as your imagination is twisted. I learned this early, back when I was still figuring out how to bend reality without breaking my own mind. The strings aren't just weapons – they're extensions of will, desire, hunger. Each one a silvery-black thread that can slice through dimensions or drain the very essence from your soul. Most people think they're just for show. Cute party tricks from the boogeyman in the shadows. Those people don't live long enough to learn better.

Want to stop a heart? A single string, thin as spider silk, slipped between ribs. Need to drain someone's power? Wrap them up tight, let the strings drink deep. Feel like reshaping reality? Grab the cosmic threads that hold existence together and pull until they snap. But the real art? It's in the subtlety. A whisper of influence here, a tug of free will there. The strings can rewrite memories, plant thoughts, twist desires. By the time you realize you're dancing to my tune, the performance is already over.

The power has a price, though. Each string I create tears a little piece of reality. Each life I drain leaves a void that needs filling. It's addictive – this feeling of unmaking and remaking the world. The hunger never really goes away. It just gets... creative.

****

First up: Maelstrom. Master of elements. Jackass extraordinaire. Tracking him down wasn't hard – just follow the trail of freak storms and "unexplained" natural disasters. The arrogant prick had all the subtlety of a hurricane in a trailer park.I found him on the Norwegian coast, standing on a cliff like some discount Zeus. The air around him crackled with power, storm clouds writhing overhead like serpents in heat. Weather was his art, and the sky was his canvas.

"I knew you'd come," he said, not bothering to turn around. Lightning danced between his fingers. "The Fellowship's killer. Aahan's pet project gone rabid."

I stepped onto the cliff edge, feeling the wind try to push me back. "Aw, you've heard of me. I'm touched."

He turned then, eyes glowing like Saint Elmo's fire. "You're a disease. A corruption that needs to be cleansed."

I grinned. "Better men than you have tried."

The fight started with a thunderclap that shattered windows fifty miles away. My ears rang like church bells in hell, and the taste of ozone filled my mouth like I'd been chewing on batteries. Maelstrom didn't waste time with foreplay. He came at me like nature's wrath personified, each step leaving scorch marks from lightning strikes. The air turned to razors in my lungs. Static electricity made my hair stand on end, and the smell of burning ozone was so thick I could taste it.

"You're out of your league, puppet boy," he snarled, hurling a bolt of lightning that could power New York for a week. The air itself seemed to scream as it split apart.

I caught it with my strings. The energy coursed through them like liquid fire, making my teeth rattle and my bones sing. Blue-white electricity danced along the black threads, creating a spider's web of death. "That tickled. Got anything else?"

His answer? A fucking tornado. Not one of those cute little dust devils either. We're talking full-on Wizard of Oz, cow-throwing monster. The funnel cloud touched down with a roar that made my previous thunder sound like a kitten's purr. Trees uprooted. Rocks became missiles. The very earth trembled.

I danced through the wind like a leaf in a hurricane, each step calculated, each movement a middle finger to physics. My strings shot out, black against the storm-dark sky, seeking flesh and power. The tornado tried to catch them, but how do you trap shadow with wind?

The first string caught his shoulder. Blood sprayed, turning to steam in the electrified air. Maelstrom screamed – not in pain, in rage. The sky answered his call like a loyal dog responding to its master's whistle. Hail the size of bowling balls rained down. I sliced through them with my strings, turning deadly ice into harmless snowflakes. Each cut was precise, surgical, turning weapons into water vapor. Show-off? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely.

He rushed me then, abandoning range for close combat. Rookie mistake. His body crackled with enough voltage to jumpstart a dead god, arcs of lightning jumping between his fingers like eager serpents. His fist connected with my jaw, and pain exploded like a supernova behind my eyes. I tasted blood and ozone, felt teeth loosening in their sockets.

I spat out a molar, grinning red. "That's more like it. Let's make this personal."

We traded blows in a deadly dance. His right hook felt like being hit by Thor's hammer, electricity adding extra spice to each impact. My counter-punch caved in his ribs, the crack of bone audible even over the storm's roar.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He grabbed my throat, pumping enough voltage through me to light up Times Square.

I headbutted him in response, feeling his nose shatter against my forehead.

He threw me through a boulder, granite exploding into shrapnel. I returned the favor by wrapping a string around his ankle and slamming him through three more. Each impact left craters, each crash punctuated by his grunts of pain. Blood ran down my face, mixing with rain. Every breath felt like inhaling broken glass. Two more teeth were loose, and I was pretty sure my left eye was swelling shut. But the pain? That just made it better.

"You're fucking insane," he gasped, spitting blood that sizzled with electricity. His right eye was swollen shut, nose crushed flat against his face. Blood ran from a dozen cuts where my strings had kissed his flesh.

"Sanity's overrated." I wiped blood from my split lip, feeling the flesh already starting to knit back together. "Besides, you haven't seen insane yet."

I unleashed my strings – dozens, hundreds, a web of death and hunger. They filled the air like phantom limbs, each one seeking blood and power. The very fabric of reality seemed to groan under their weight, darkness made manifest. Maelstrom took to the sky, riding a column of superheated air like his own personal elevator to heaven. Lightning coursed over his skin in fractal patterns, beautiful and deadly. His eyes blazed white-hot, twin suns of pure power.

"You want to see power?" He raised his arms, and the world went to shit.

The storm intensified beyond anything natural. Winds that could strip flesh from bone howled like damned souls. Rain fell as acid, burning holes in everything it touched. Lightning wrote his name across the clouds in letters of fire, each bolt capable of vaporizing a tank.

A normal person would've run. A smart person would've died.

I laughed and spread my arms wide, letting the storm's fury wash over me. "Come on, weather boy. Show me what you've got!"

He brought down the sky.

A bolt of lightning hit me square in the chest, turning my world white. Agony doesn't begin to describe it. Every nerve ending screamed in chorus. My heart did the electric slide, stopping and starting like a car with bad spark plugs. The smell of burning flesh – my flesh – filled the air, mixing with the ozone to create a cocktail of death.

But I didn't fall.

I caught the next bolt with my bare hands, letting my strings drink deep. The power filled me like liquid nitrogen in my veins, burning cold and electric hot at the same time. My laugh echoed across the battlefield, amplified by the storm itself.

"Impossible," Maelstrom whispered, fear creeping into his voice like frost on a window. "Nobody can absorb that much power. Nobody."

I grinned through bloody teeth, feeling electricity dance between them. "Nothing's impossible. You just lack imagination."

My strings shot upward, piercing through his storm shield like it was tissue paper. They wrapped around him, through him, becoming part of him. Each one hummed with hunger, eager to feast.

The sky itself seemed to hold its breath.

"No... please..." His voice cracked as he felt his power begin to drain. The storm around us faltered, lightning flickering like a dying bulb.

"Shhh." I pulled him close, like a lover's embrace. My strings tightened, drinking deeper. "Just let go. Fighting only makes it hurt more."

I held him there, suspended by my strings, his power draining like water from a cracked cup. But I wasn't done. Not yet.

"Before you die," I whispered, pulling him closer, "tell me where to find Torque."

Maelstrom coughed, blood spattering his lips. Each breath sounded like wet gravel. "Fuck... you..."

I twisted my strings. Just a little. Just enough to make every nerve ending sing with agony. "Wrong answer."

His scream echoed across the cliff face. Lightning flickered weakly around him, a dying animal's last defense.

"She's..." he gasped, "she's in Shanghai. The... abandoned Meridian Tower. Thirty-seventh floor." A wet laugh bubbled up from his throat. "Not that it matters. She'll... she'll break you like a twig."

I smiled, gentle as a knife in the dark. "That's what you thought too."

"She's different," he spat. "Stronger. More control. She'll turn your strings against you. Make you... make you her puppet."

"Thanks for the warning." I tightened my grip. "Any last words?"

His eyes met mine, defiant even in defeat. "Yeah. When this is over... when you've killed us all... you'll become exactly what you hate. Another god playing with—"

I yanked the strings shut. His words cut off with a wet gurgle.

Sometimes, last words are overrated.

His power flowed into me like liquid lightning. Pure elemental fury becoming another note in my symphony of destruction. I felt it all – every storm he'd ever called, every lightning bolt he'd ever thrown, every wind he'd ever commanded. His screams were music, his struggles a dance, his defeat a beautiful tragedy. The storm raged one final time, responding to its master's death throes. Lightning struck in patterns that would give meteorologists nightmares. Thunder rolled like God's own drum solo. Rain fell upward.

When it was over, Maelstrom fell like a puppet with cut strings. The irony wasn't lost on me. His body tumbled limply through the air, all power and grace gone, just meat and bone obeying gravity's law. I stood on the cliff edge, letting the rain wash away the blood – his and mine. The storm died with its master, leaving behind a sky as clean and empty as Maelstrom's corpse. My body hummed with stolen power, electricity crackling between my fingers at the slightest thought.

Weather patterns shifted around me, responding to my will. The very air trembled, recognizing its new master. With a gesture, I called down a single lightning bolt, just because I could. It struck the ocean, turning seawater to steam. Maelstrom's body tumbled off the cliff, falling, falling, falling. The sea swallowed him whole, claiming another secret for its depths.

I stood there, letting my new power settle. Weather patterns shifted around me, responding to my will. The very air trembled, recognizing its new master.

One down. Three to go.

And as I turned away from the cliff, I couldn't help but smile. The Fellowship thought they were gods?

I was about to show them what a real god could do.