text: The Conduit of the Storm was expiring. That was always dangerous. It was one of the most destructive primordial forces of the planet. Within the soul of a wizened old lady, hid the might of all storms that ever raged. Once she was gone, the Cabal would have to wait. Wait for years, until the next Conduit was matured, it's powers unleashed. And in the ensuing chaos, they'd contain it. The very first Cabal was held to withhold the Storm of their age, after he had almost destroyed the city of London in 1703. Ever since then, the whole organization had a single goal: to contain Storm, or any other forces that threatened existence. This Storm, however, was fading. Helena Gregory had lived in cloyster since her teens. After a close brush with death-by-vampire, the fury of the storm she had conjured had almost leveled her remote little village in the Highlands. She was swiftly taken in by the Cabal, kept fed, clothed and content for almost 70 years, learning and writing. She fled a few times of course, and rode the Storm across land and sea, fleeing her captors, but the Cabal has resources that sheer power can't take out. Ignorant of the finesse of her gift, Helena was always recaptured, taken back to her gilded cage. She now was old. And the Conduit inside of her readied it's departure. Helena lied in her bed. Around her were the faces of the Cabal's top soultrackers, scaled here, bearded there, slenderly elvish somewhere. She knew that her end was nigh, and that these stooges were there to better calculate where that power inside of her would move after she was gone. They thought that storm over. They were almost right. From deep within her soul, where the Conduit thrummed with energy, breaking free of it's perch, Helena knew how she wanted to go. It wasn't laying down on this septic bed surrounded by goons in labcoats. For one last, joyful, glorious time, she called the storm. And, like always, but also like never before, awnser, it did. The room erupted in wind, rain and hail suddenly falling from the ceiling, and it was that wind that plucked Helena from her bed and lifted her up. She met the eyes of the terrified lizardman that just seconds earlier jeered at her visage, and let out a hearty laugh. "You creeps won't find it next time. He'll be a great one." Helena raised a flabby arm and pointed at the wall. From her roomy storm rose lightning, and it blasted the wall to bits, revealing a daunting drop. Daunting to many. But not to the Conduit of the Storm. Helena flew out, and ever upward, her storm carrying her higher, higher, higher, to the upper echelons of the wordly dome. In the ascent she let go, of the life that she didn't get to live. And the Conduit carried her to space, out of gratitude for that one glorious moment, before it found itself hurtling back to earth. Towards the wailing cries of a newly born Arthur Sunderland, son of scholars, heir to books, and carrier of a sense of justice that the Conduit, as it fused itself with the boy's soul, could not help to be giddy about.