The pressure above Sylas continued to gather until the clouds lost any resemblance to weather, layers of black and grey compressing against one another while white-gold light moved through their depths in broad, silent currents.
Looking up at them pulled the memory of Gogo's Ancestor across his mind, that enormous Serpentes rising beneath an open sky only for something higher to answer its refusal to bow.
Before Sylas could even finish processing the thought the first bolt descended.
It wasn't thin enough to be called a streak of lightning. A column of white tore out of the clouds with gold wrapped around its edges, broad enough to swallow Sylas and the ground surrounding him, and the thunder arrived at almost the same instant as he flooded his body with Dragon Will and crossed his scaled forearms over his head.
