'I don't need elixirs for the deviants,' he realized. 'I never did. I just needed pathways wide enough to generate them from the basics while the basics were still running.'
Lightning was a deviant element because it required three of the four basics operating in a specific harmony. Wind for motion. Water for conductivity. Earth for grounding. When all three ran simultaneously in the right configuration, the byproduct was electrical charge. Push that charge past a threshold and it discharged as lightning.
Electricity was the underlying force. Lightning was its expression at scale. The manipulation of one was the manipulation of the other. Control the charge, and the bolt followed.
Before the trial, he couldn't do such a thing. Quinlan had, of course, experimented with mixing the various elements in hopes of unlocking new ones. Those experiments never yielded the results he was hoping for.
But now…
Quinlan closed his eyes.
