Volcanoes
are not nice places. Sure, on TV they look cool with a red hot lava flow
streaming down the side of the mountain, but up close it’s not so fun. I
watched as Carl in bare feet, jetted up the slope. He literally jetted up with
fire streaming out of his feet. He flew straight up the side of the caldera to
where the sprays of lava spewed out in equal measure with chunks of red-hot
rock.
I set up a
strong wind from the east to keep me from broiling. Fortunately we were in
Canada so the wind brought relief with it as it came through. Other than that,
my job was simple: I stood in place.
Carl Used
white hot gouts of flame to widen the caldera, melting it and creating a
thicker river of molten rock. The volcano continued to release lava and stone,
but also belched forth great clouds of ash and gases. The violence of the
eruption, the particulate friction, and the temperature difference caused the
gases and ash to form into a violent thundercloud that instantly ionized
channels straight to me. Lightning flashed down into me one after another.
It tingled
after the first three, but on the fourth, I felt my capacity to hold the bolts
go beyond what I was capable of. I had to discharge the rest out of my body.
The ground around my feet began to erupt as lightning shot out of my body
tearing holes in clothing as it did so. The lightning discharged with enough
force to throw up more debris, which only added to the dust in the air.
I continued
to discharge all the lightning, making myself feel like one of those little
globes with the plasma filaments only instead of a half-dozen lazy filaments,
hundreds of bolts discharged out of me even as the sky continued to shoot more
at me. The world went blue-white even though my eyes were closed.
All I could
do was continue to discharge lightning as more came at me. Time became
meaningless. I knew it couldn’t have been very long, but the endless channeling
of so much lightning exhausted me. With each discharge into the ground I thought
I might finally get ahead of what continued to pour into me, only to have the
energy surge once more.
Finally, I
got ahead of the bolts, able to send enough of a surge into the ground that I
could once again open my eyes.
The air
stung my eyes, not with ash and heat, but with the ionized ozone the lightning
had generated all around me. For all I knew I had been breathing nothing but
ozone the entire time.
Carl stood outside
the sphere where my lightning had struck.
“Reilly,”
he said.
“Yeah,” I
panted.
“I don’t
like you, but that was fucking impressive.”
I started
laughing, and he joined in.