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He placed his hands over the child's forehead, left palm resting across the back of the right hand, and took a deep breath.
As always, the feeling began in his center, somewhere behind the meeting of his ribcage. It was different for every priest, and different again for each god. For him, it was as if a restless breeze was building, racing in circles around his insides, looking for a way out. He waited.
He would let it go at a strength depending on the severity of the sickness or wound; for a scraped knee, he'd need only a moment to muster up the energy required to heal it. For a broken arm, or leg, he'd have to hold it until it began to hurt. For this... the longer he let it build, the better the chance would be. He just had to concentrate.
The waiting was the hardest part. Knowing that every minute he spent, she moved one step closer to death.
The pain set in. The gusts in his chest started to spread - the currents began to flow through his arms, his legs, and started to tickle the bottom of his throat.
The windstorm continued to build. He felt tiny streams of air flowing out of his ears, half expecting to hear whistling. The wind now coursed through his entire body - he felt it jostling his vital organs around, bouncing off the skin at end of his toes, began to see the skin on the back of his hand start to ripple slightly. He'd never waited this long, and it was getting dangerous.
The pressure on the back of his eyeballs was getting unbearable. He was losing his footing on the floor as the gusting winds bounced around in his ankles. He was vibrating in place, from head to toe, his body jerking around, barely able to keep his hands still enough. He was starting to get light-headed...
Now. He pulled from reserves of strength that he hadn't been aware of until that moment, and constricted his whole body, forcing all the power out of him.
The wind rushed out of the palms of his hands - a rapidly expanding cone of wind and energy filled the room, seeming to rock its very foundations. All sound was obliterated by the roaring of the wind in Zach's ears...