When the sky serpent spoke, its voice was thunder. Rusk understood what it was saying because everyone understands thunder.

“What are you shooting,” demanded the sky serpent.

“Monsters,” answered Rusk in his most heroic voice, which came out as a strained squeak.

“Fancy yourself a hero, do you?”

“Maybe.”

“Have you never heard that heroes have bad luck?”

Rusk’s chest tightened. He dared to glare up at the sky serpent.

The sky serpent glared back. Or perhaps it simply looked upon Rusk, scrutinized him. The sky serpent’s face was so different from a human’s it was difficult to tell. And it didn’t have the face of a monster either. If anything its visage was pure animal, neither human nor anything darker. It was the weather. It was nature. It was lightning. But it was nothing more than those things. It had no agenda but unto itself, no malice, but also no love. That made Rusk bold. That or the fact these might be his final moments, lying supine with a sky serpent’s tail swishing around him in impatience but also curiosity.

“No one ever tells me why,” said Rusk.

The sky serpent’s tail stopped swishing. “Why?”

“Why do heroes have bad luck? Why does everyone keep insisting but never have any real proof of it? What tales are there really, of heroes who’ve had bad luck? No one ever elaborates. The vagueness makes the whole thing suspicious if you ask me.”

“No one asked you.”

“Isn’t that ridiculous? Nineteen years and no one has ever asked me. Has anyone ever asked you?”

“Not that I can remember, but I care little for such things. I do however.” The sky serpent flicked its tongue, a two-pronged swish of air that whipped at Rusk’s face before it flicked back inside the giant serpentine mouth. “Care when someone shoots me with Elva Arrows.”

Rusk heard himself gulp, but he was too caught up in other sensations to feel it in his throat. The puddle in which he lay grew hot under the sky serpent’s blazing gaze. Mud water boiled on all sides of Rusk, producing steam that smelled like a mixture of mildew and gravesite. The sky serpent’s body coiled and sparked brighter, drawing electricity down from the sky, channeling the power of the storm into every scale. Its eyes shone, invigorated by the current passing through its skull. When its voice rumbled out again, it came from everywhere, from far away and from right above Rusk, from the sky and from the wind and from the earth which quaked with the sound.

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“Why did you shoot me with an Elva Arrow?”

“Because I had to?”

“You lie. Why?”

“Don’t eat me. Or electrocute me. Or drown me.”

“Why did you shoot me with an Elva Arrow?”

“Because.” Rusk felt a surge all through his blood, and fearing this might be the very last phrase he ever uttered, he screamed at the top of his lungs, overcome with an emotion he’d only felt once before, when that monster raked through his arms as a child. “Because I wanted to feel alive!”

“That is a stupid reason to shoot someone with an Elva Arrow.”

Rusk balked. He went still, dumbfounded, struck out of his declarative moment with sudden all-encompassing embarrassment, and the sky serpent’s tail swung up, across, around, his torso. Rusk’s attempt to block ended feebly. He wound up with his elbows clamped hard against his ribs as the sky serpent raised him bodily off the ground into the air.

“Seems to me a hero would have a better reason than that.”

Rusk struggled, gasping for air. The tail squeezed tighter, as if to prove a point.

The sky serpent leveled him with an unamused stare. The lightning in its eyes fizzled down to sparks. Its true eye color was an oceanic blue, full of depths and shallows that churned over one another in swells and crashing waves that crackled with every thought that passed across them. Rusk did his best not to fidget under that gaze, and wondered if that was how the real ocean was. All purposeful spontaneity. He’d never seen the ocean, or any body of water that wasn’t his forest river, except in illustrations. It was terrifying and wondrous.

“It was a mistake,” whispered Rusk. “I’m sorry.”

If sky serpents could snort.

The atmosphere rippled in sharp electric disgust.

“I saw you rolling around in the sky and thought you must be a monster.”

“You do not know what Elva is,” said the sky serpent in a voice that was as flat as thunder itself could manage. A deep earthy rumble, so low in register Rusk could barely interpret its words.

“What?”

“I descended from the sky because I am part of Elva, and you shot a piece of me back into myself. I foolishly assumed you had a good reason to summon me.” The sky serpent’s tail loosened, allowing Rusk to breathe more deeply, which wasn’t as deep as Rusk would’ve liked if he were being perfectly honest. But he’d take what he could get in this monstrous situation. He wheezed, pulling as much air as possible into his lungs. It burned.

“I thought the Elva was magic,” said Rusk between gasps. “Just magic.”

“Just magic! Only just!”

“I’m sorry?”

“An aspirer who thinks magic is only just. Tarfell would be so displeased.”

“Tarfell? As in Iya Tarfell?” Rusk squirmed, but now he was less inclined to escape and more inclined to hear the sky serpent better over the storm which still pelted the earth all around them. “You know her?”

“Knew,” corrected the sky serpent. “I served her. Now she is dead.”

Rusk felt his heart hit his feet.

“That’s why I brought my storm here. To find her killer. To exact revenge.”

“Someone murdered her,” said Rusk, stunned. “Who?”

“Heroes,” said the sky serpent, as a point of clarification. “Bad luck.”