One moment, the air hung still, polite, not bothering the myriad passing insects or raising flurries of leaves. Then a sharp gust startled the insects, the leaves and Rinoa; it pushed dark clouds overhead and flicked through Rinoa's pink romance novel as if it wished to read about the Princess Jasmine and the brave knight who rescued her from every danger. It pelted the pages with heavy raindrops, in mockery or warning. Rinoa closed the book and jumped up, not needing sorceress magic to tell her of the coming storm.
Too late. She'd only gone a couple of steps when the black-purple clouds became waterfalls, sending a gush of water that stunned her with its force and matted her long hair into tails. She yelped and ran for Garden.
The storm thought it was a game or, perhaps, a hunt. Blasts of wind tangled her cape through her legs to trip her, blew branches and leaves in her face, while the sky aimed pellets of water at her, small but numerous. "Not funny!" she gasped, crashing through undergrowth with a mental prayer to Hyne that no monsters would cross her path.
The gale sang along beside her, doing ghost and wolf imitations and slashing at her with tree branches. It turned shadows into lurking, writhing creatures and gave them a wild voice.
Sorceress, why run?
Now, that was not the wind; speech without sound, it entered her mind without affecting her ears. Rinoa's eyes became saucer-wide, half-closing again as the rain clawed at them. The wood and the storm were really beginning to get to her. She sped up.
Sorceress, stop. Don't run from the storm, feel its power.
"Aaaagh!" In a flash of lightning that divided a tree into two smoking halves, an old man appeared. The quintessential wizard, from the top of his bald head to the end of his beard which reached nearly to his toes, he carried a staff and his robe was dry as an abandoned bone despite the downpour. Rinoa screamed again.
Foolish girl. The words arrived directly in her mind again, impossible to ignore. You run from the storm, you fear it. Rinoa's hand reached automatically towards her blaster, though she doubted it could work against the man.
Why do you fear it? Is this why? A bolt of lightning flashed from the racing clouds to the wizard's staff, then, impossibly, arced from it to her, destroying the blaster. Her breath choked her as she saw felt how close it came to her hand and saw the rising spark-burn marks all over her right side. "Oww," she whimpered.
Thunder crashed overhead, Ragnarok-loud, almost drowning out the wind. Rinoa knew what was happening, could almost feel the electricity building in the air around her. Feel its power, sorceress.
And the world vanished. Lightning struck all around her and stopped, fencing her in; so hot it was cold, so bright it left her vision dark. It was all around her, white and gold and blue together, crackling and snapping, its sparks biting her arms and face and clothes. Rinoa screamed, "Help! Squall, someone, please help! Help me!" Loud, yet useless; it did nothing but make her throat raw. Balamb Garden was far away.
The lightning didn't like that, she soon realised. It crept in towards her, stopped her breath with its metallic tangy scent and its deadly proximity. Nowhere left to run. Nowhere to hide.
She had her powers, none of which worked against lightning. No blaster, no Angelo, no strong companions by her side - they wouldn't be able to help anyway. I'm trapped, I'm dead, she thought, and started to shake. But there had to be some way out. Rinoa closed her eyes, tried to forget the flickering, deadly, electric field around her, and tried to think amid the storm. What had he said? "'Don't run from the storm'," she murmured, "'feel its power'." Then he'd tried to kill her. No, he shot away the blaster when she moved to attack him. Feel the power... Well, she had - getting drowned in a monsoon of rain and almost electrocuted. But there was another way to feel its power. Memories of learning magic welled up in her mind…
"Just sense the power in the draw point. Close your eyes, reach with your mind..."
She called first on her sorceress powers and her intangible wings flickered on her back, unharmed by the lightning, and she reached for the storm with her mind.
Chaos. I am the weighted clouds, the gales that drive them and the energy that crackles within, the warning rumble of thunder the darkness before the lightning and the blazing violent power...
She wrested her mind away from the storm before it subsumed her and fell in a heap on the wet ground, shuddering with the energy she had channelled. Remembered again...
"Rinoa, are you all right?" She blinked, conscious of pain all over, and found herself metres away from the draw point. "The power surprised you, didn't it? Try again, but be careful this time - just touch the edges of the energy, find its shape."
Forewarned was forearmed; now she probed the whirling storm with one tendril of consciousness, concentrating on finding a pattern in the formlessness. Her mind surfed the waves of energy, searching for the shape - and found it. She wrapped her mind around it, merged her powers with it, communed with the storm.
She walked through the lightning barrier, feeling a mere tingle as it surged into her, and faced the old man. A strange, changing light, gold and white, blue and purple-black, filled her eyes, pupil and all, and the storm seemed to follow her. Rinoa waved her hand, a simple, lazy gesture, and the lightning barrier reformed, but around the man this time. He smiled. Congratulations, Sorceress Rinoa. You have passed.
"Passed? What have I passed?" Her voice was literally thunderous, and the sky echoed her words. Her hair whipped round her face like the dark wings of a Fury while her wings reflected the sky's colours.
You have faced fear alone, you have survived the storm. The old man bowed his head. You have fought Guardian Forces before and had your physical strength tested. I tested your mental strength, and you performed well. Therefore, I offer myself as your Guardian Force.
In the calm at the heart of the storm, Rinoa found the presence of mind to answer him. "A Guardian Force? Who are you?"
I am Ramuh. The name sparked recognition in her… a priest of Quezacotl? The GF nodded, smiling. The first High Priest of the Thunder God Quezacotl whom I now serve in the astral realm. Will you accept my aid?
Frightened thoughts scuttled through Rinoa's mind. 'A Guardian Force... but they're too powerful, too strong to choose me. I'm not even SeeD, I'm weak…' But the storm had eroded the feeble 'princess', charred away her pretensions. A new, reforged Rinoa stood to take the junction, stretched out her hand to the Guardian Force.
Force was right. She gasped as lightning coursed up her arm and straight through her entire body as though she had swallowed the storm itself. Perhaps she had. As she completed the junction, it died away from the world; the wind ceased its wild cries and dancing, the gale slowed to a trickle and the sky cleared to blue and white. But the power of them all still ran in her veins and intensified her senses. Rinoa felt free.
As she headed back to Garden she found the book that she had been reading when the storm hit, and finally saw herself in its pitiful heroine. She remembered being in the ring of electricity and screaming for help like so many times before. That was the past. No more being a damsel in distress. Sorceress, Daughter of Hyne, Summoner of Ramuh. She'd faced the storm without and within and she'd survived.
She was strong.