It was reading him. He could see the pattern it was displaying, the head lowering slightly, the lightning under the skin shifting its pattern, concentrating toward the chest and shoulders rather than running evenly through the body, it was building something.
The fur along the spine rose, and the air between them developed a smell like the moment before a real storm breaks.
The telegraph.
He recognized it from the ridge, from the pack wolves that was attacking the village, the fur, the concentration, the smell.
He moved sideways before it fired.
The lightning came out as a sustained discharge rather than a bolt, a wide branching arc that swept across the market ground and hit everything metal in the area simultaneously.
It hit Lucius across the left side.
Luckily for him it was not directly, he had moved enough that the main discharge missed, but the arc found him anyway, the branching reach of it catching him across the ribs and left arm.
