The bad luck began before Rusk had reached the end of the forest. A storm rolled in practically the moment he was about to step off the path that marked the edge of his usual territory, and drenched him in the span of four seconds. There was no thunder, and while stormy weather wasn’t particularly uncommon in the forest, lightning struck a tree as he was sloshing through the mud, and the trunk barked its warning in a great crunch as it leaned, toppling towards the ground in Rusk’s path, sending him scrambling to avoid being crushed by felled timber.

He didn’t flee the falling tree all that gracefully, and wound up sprawled on his back in the mud panting, blinking through the cold water pelting his face from the sky. Blurrily in his vision, past the canopy, a flash of something white and vaguely serpentine sped through the gray quilt work of clouds. A shriek made Rusk claw at his own ears. He pressed his heels automatically into the earth and scooted back back back, sliding halfway supine through rivers of rain as he smashed the pads of his palms as deep into his ear canal as they would go.

He still heard the shriek.

It was animal agony.

Angry animal agony.

When he wrenched himself up to his feet he realized at some point the Elva Bow had vanished. The Elva Arrows in his quiver as well. They wouldn’t aide him here. Luckily thanks to Mandy’s foresight he still had the spare bow she’d crafted for him and the arrows made of ordinary materials to work with. He pulled himself up against the sturdy dark bark of a nearby tree and found solace in the cover of a large drooping leaf that hung overhead directing water away from his face. A private waterfall. A miniature sanctuary.

The storm pounded harder, shattering the moment and Rusk’s safe spot, proving how tender and fragile it was. How temporary.

He didn’t dash through the rest of the forest; he waded and swam. The shriek pierced through the drumbeats of raindrops loudly enough to make Rusk give up on saving his ears. The rivulets running down his arms made his grip on the bow slippery and the feathers on his arrows droop with the weight of the water. Rusk knocked an arrow anyway, automatically, even though he had no idea where to shoot. But he knew. He knew there was more to this storm than the atmosphere. He knew there was a monster in the works. Up in the sky. Shrieking. Making lightning.

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He’d have to find a way to beat lightning with an arrow, he told himself. Though he scoffed, the adrenaline that shot up his veins sent his heart drumming and his muscles tensing, his soul yearned for the action. A wide smile spread his face. There was no one around to see. No one around to judge. No one to tell him he couldn’t or shouldn’t act on the heroic instincts he’d honed over his adolescent years.

He sprinted out into an open field, the farthest he’d ever traveled from home, at a run inside the storm, and the Elva Bow and all its arrows returned to him, switching places with the spare Mandy had given him of their own accord.

Rusk halted and spun his arrow tip toward the sky, drawing fully, expanding his chest and compressing his back as his grin stretched toward both ears, taut as the bow string. He could feel every pound of his heart as he awaited the flash of the serpentine creature so high above, and when he saw it stretch and coil inside the clouds, lightning arcing along white scales, he loosed the Elva Arrow and watched it hit its mark.

Which promptly came careening out of the sky toward him.

The spell of self-assurance broke and Rusk screamed in quite the heroic manner as he fled the descending sky serpent. The further it fell from the clouds the larger Rusk realized it was, and he sprinted back for the trees, dodging the bulk of its electrified body as it coiled and turned in an attempt to right itself before it hit the ground, or perhaps in an attempt to right itself and fly away. In either case, there was no way Rusk wanted to be a part of the process, so he put all his energy into racing for the tree line. And never got there.

A great scaled tail still sizzling with electricity slapped down in front of Rusk. The force of the impact generated a quake in the earth that knocked him off balance. He flailed, his heels slipped through mud and he splashed onto his back, floating long grasses wrenched loose from the storm water clinging to his every item of clothing, including his quiver. The Elva Bow and Arrows vanished out of Rusk’s grip, but the natural ones remained to earn their grime.

At any other time he would’ve cared that the bow Mandy made for him was an utter mess, but then there was a sky serpent staring down its snout at him with glowing electric eyes the color of blue fire, and Rusk felt the tingle of ozone in its breath on his face. The talons didn’t dig into the earth, they hovered above it, and the tail curled closer, fencing Rusk in towards the beast.

It snapped the Elva Arrow between its teeth and glowered with whiskers flaring.