Rain and wind whipped against John's armour as he knelt in the rain. Thunder rumbled incessantly, and the sound of crashing trees came in distantly, hard wood cracking as they dragged their neighbours down.

However important those things were, however, they paled in comparison to the religious act he'd been forced into. He held a thick metal pipe in his hands, attaching it to the rising structure with all the delicacy he could muster. They were building a metal tower. By hand. In the middle of a torrential storm that seethed with lightning.

It seemed suicidal; pointless and suicidal.

He supposed one of his teachers simply pulling out of their cores would have defeated the purpose of the ritual.

John had no idea which idiot believed that would be a good way to appease the heavens' wrath, but he was quite sure they hadn't gone on to live a long life. Hell, he was of half a mind to simply bolt and try his luck in the wilderness. They were simply courting death by building a damn lightning rod in the middle of a storm.

He shoved the pipe into place with a strained grunt, huffing as he checked it for stability. It held firmly. Nodding to himself, John wiped the water out of his eyes and went back to grab the next one.

John dearly hoped that this would truly serve to appease the descending spirit. His gut seemed to agree, though common sense told him what he was doing and thinking was ridiculous.

But then again, they were in a magical world where any random person in the street was, theoretically, capable of producing weapons of mass destruction at the drop of a hat. Common sense had no place in a world like that.

Suppressing the twitch that interrupted his movements every time lightning struck, John wrangled the pipe in his hands until it was in a somewhat comfortable position.

He looked at Greg for further instructions, the old man's white clothes on an elevated platform the rain splattered on hard to miss. It took a while until Greg found time for him, and when he did, he pointed towards the very highest portion of their growing project. It had turned out surprisingly decent, considering that they had churned it out in what must have been an hour. His destination was almost level with the surrounding trees. Very, very close to attracting the next errant bolt of lightning.

John's right eye twitched. He didn't say anything. He wouldn't be the first to complain, and certainly not the last.

'Here's to hoping nothing zaps me to death,' he thought as he started ascending the winding stone stairs that surrounded their project. He could have turned his armour into a faraday cage if they'd told him beforehand. That, at least, could have given him a fair chance at surviving a lightning bolt.

Out of habit, John waited for the marble to send a mocking retort. His shoulders slumped when he remembered that none would be coming in quite a while.

Taking his time on the secure surface of the stone stairs surrounding the deathtrap, John made space for a shivering Ronnie to pass through. The boy's armour was rattling even whilst standing still. It would have been noisy had it not been for the roaring background noises.

"You can take it slow, y'know?", John said as they were about to pass each other.

Ronnie's helmet revealed no emotion, but he could still see it shake from side to side. "I, I can't. Now when everyone else is doing it, too." There was a brief pause as Ronnie stopped, and John followed suit. "If lightning strikes, being down there is no safer than up here. An-" The boy's words were interrupted by lightning shattering a close-by tree. It's bright light blinded them, and the ensuing thunder drowned out every other sound.

John almost slipped then, the heavy weight of the pipe and Ronnie's trembling hand the only things keeping him from falling to his death, or more likely Franziska's or Greg's arms.

Then, the other boy shifted his weight, and now John snapped his arm out to stabilise him in turn. They tugged at each other like that for a while, each boy balancing off the other.

They let go of each other once their senses returned, John chuckling nervously as he watched the new, smoking hole in the canopy. Ronnie joined in, and they laughed together at the fact that this was happening, and that they were both still alive.

The adrenaline rush passed quickly, though, and by the end, the two were just tired. "Let's talk some other time?", Ronnie suggested.

John nodded, and the two parted ways. It didn't take long to reach the platform marking the highest heights he could ascend to, his soles squeaking as they rubbed against hard metal. The vista of a long, long fall was visible beyond the edges of the metal square he stood on. One lonely pole was positioned right in front of the stairway, the tall object making it difficult to manoeuvre past.

Ignoring the unkind thoughts in his head with ease only years of practice could bring, John looked for the markings Franziska had left behind. Fortunately, the rain and wind did an excellent job at washing muddy footprints away. The dim lighting also made the glowing circles marking his intended targets better.

Choosing the closest one, John wedged it in with care. It fit perfectly, slipping through his hands and then tightening by itself as an unknown property that must have cost an ungodly amount of aether activated and melted the wedge close. He stepped back, admiring the now second pole standing on the platform before making his way to the staircase.

Naturally, the storm took that very moment to kick it up by a notch.

John had no time to react before a splintering branch of blinding lightning made the forest around the tower explode into flames and wooden splinters. Something hit his chestplate with a sharp twang, the impact and following thunder driving all thoughts out. He slipped, and his hands shot out as they grasped for something to hold on to.

John found himself on clutching a metal pole when the disorientation had faded. His ears were ringing too loud to think. His lungs were screaming for air, and he tried to take a breath only to stop halfway. Something was pressing on his chest, or at least making breathing difficult.

Groaning, the boy sat up. He quickly discovered that the cause for his breathing problems laid in a massive dent in the middle of his breastplate.

The boy coughed once, before gritting his teeth and reabsorbing the entire upper half of his armour. It sank into his skin without a hitch, freeing his lungs to take a desperately needed breath of fresh air.

"Fuck, that was close," he choked out when his lungs finally stopped burning. Focusing on breathing deeply now, John followed his gut and looked up, where a river of clouds was descending on their position.

John took a moment to appreciate the unique vista before his logical mind kicked in. 'A...what is coming at us?'

He pushed himself to his aching feet before pacing towards the stairway. Laying on the highest platform of their offering didn't exactly sound like a good way to stay the fuck out of whatever the approaching thing's radar was. John thanked himself for fashioning the sabatons' soles to make traversing most surfaces no problem.

His classmates were already kneeling in the mud when he jumped over the last of the stairs. Their heads were bowed, eyes closed and hands held together.

Mud splashed all over their reverent poses when John ran over and slid into his assigned place. He muttered apologies on the way, lest nasty surprises await him once they got back to safety, but kept them brief and hurried. Once he, too, had fallen into position, he fell silent along with the rest of them. The next part was supposed to be important.

John saw his teachers step forward before he, too, closed his eyes.

For a while, there were only roaring winds and thunderous rumbles. John suppressed the urge to move and sat still, waiting for something to happen. Rain pattered against his helmet and mud started soaking through his armour into the clothes underneath. He could feel his dry lips, and the thousand little aches he hadn't even noticed due to his constant movement. Now, they were returning with a vengeance, and he wondered how he'd ever forgotten about them.

If nothing else, John could take solace in the fact that he was focused enough not to sink into his thoughts. That thought reaffirmed itself when he heard a deep gong bellow across their entire region. It hurt his ears a little, but then again so did the lightning he had survived not too long ago. The five adults were chanting something he couldn't quite make out through the background noise, but John was sure it was some sort of religious prayer, perhaps hundreds of years old and archaic beyond belief.

But it seemed to work. The storm seemed to subside a bit, and the thunders became more distant. Instead, he could feel the wind picking up and his stomach clench painfully. He almost hurled then and there, but somehow managed to keep his meagre lunch down with nothing else than sheer willpower and a dreadful fear of death. He was only grateful for the fact that the teachers had deemed there not to be enough time to teach them the appropriate prayers. Puking during a prayer seemed like a good way to be smitten into dust.

And then John felt the presence descend for real. It was pure power distilled into an existential dread that John couldn't compare himself to. He was nothing but an uplifted monkey against the approaching quasi-divinity. A short fleck in the life of an immortal cloud, evermore drifting by and watching the lands below until something caught its attention. His blood ran cold when he realised that something in this forest had caused it to descend.

The air shuddered, and wind blew into John's helmet through the breathing holes. The chanting intensified until John was able to understand the occasional word, the rest being lost in the roaring winds. It contained words John wasn't comfortable with, such as "ceremonial sacrifice" or "reverent subjects", but then again they were supposed to appease something causing a terrifying storm, not talk to their equal.

Seconds passed as increasingly stronger winds descended, buffeting all of them in what felt like an almost tangible current of air. John gritted his teeth and leaned against the wind, fighting the gale to avoid being lifted into the storm. The additional weight his armour would have provided would have been worth its weight in gold.

John flinched when a large hand came down on his shoulder. He had just enough time to realise that it belonged to Franzika before he was snatched and thrown into the air.

Naturally, John screamed as he soared into the skies. He was cut short by another, larger pair of hands catching him like a mortal might catch a ball, letting his momentum bleed out with a series of slow spins that made the boy sick to the stomach.

"There we go," he heard Greg say. He seemed exhausted, though John was incapable of seeing any details due to his visor. "Don't be so tense, now will you? The messenger has demanded to inspect every one of you, so just keep your mouth shut and let it do its thing. You're not guilty, so long as you shut your trap nothing bad is going to happen to you. Nod if you understand what I am saying."

'Deep breaths,' John reminded himself as he nodded. 'No one is suspecting anything. Your conscience is clear.'

He was then held tossed upwards, where a spinning funnel of air and rain arose to carry him towards the rumbling thunderclouds. John spun and flailed as he shot through the air like an arrow, the acceleration contorting his features into a ridiculous grimace. Rain smashed against his uncovered face, the droplets becoming painful weapons at the speeds he was travelling at.

The flailing intensified when he penetrated the cloud layer and found himself surrounded by a sea of inky mist. He slowly decelerated from there, coming to a stop in what must have been somewhere in the middle of the cloud.

John hung there for a long instant, suspended thousands of metres in the air. Perhaps John should have been upset or desperate, but in truth, the only feeling John felt then was a deep sense of repressed anger. He was helpless again, his life depending on the whims of a being he couldn't do anything about. First the horde of suicidal beasts and now this pseudo-divinity descending for seemingly no apparent reason.

He was done with this. Done with these ridiculous occurrences that popped out of nowhere and threw his life for a loop.

Once he grew up - and John hated having to say this once more - he definitely wouldn't such things happen again. He needed more power. Enough to make anything like this over-glorified meteorological phenomenon think twice about crossing him.

An inhuman, all-encompassing attention settled on him. Thunder boomed as lightning flashed all around him.

Flinching at the ridiculously loud sound, John took a few wary glances at the clouds around him. Nothing, as expected from a faceless and nameless and entity. Remembering his teacher's wise words, John shut his mouth and waited.

He didn't have to wait long as mist solidified and enveloped him in a cool embrace. Cloth and leather didn't stop its advance for even a second, the insidious mist perhaps not even realising that there had been something in the way.

Goosebumps erupted on John's skin when the icy air reached it. An intense feeling of wrongness overwhelmed him, but before John could act on the hunch he felt a surge of foreign aether breaking through his skin and entering the body underneath. It filled his veins with ice, instantly sucking all the energy and heat out of his body.

John instinctively fought back, his body releasing his aether in response. It was a futile act, his rational mind knew and tried to limit the damage. But his thoughts were growing sluggish, slower and slower with every second.

His aether was pushed back with contemptuous ease, the icy energy advancing ever further along his channels. John already couldn't feel most of his body anymore by the time it reached his head.

It felt like he was floating in a sea of clouds, peacefully drifting about in its endless expanse. Here and there, through the occasional gap in between fluffy layers of white, he could see the lands below. It was a wild mesh of greens, looking very much like a forest.

He gazed upon it, and for a brief infinity, John was truly at peace. There was no need to hide or fight or flee anymore. What was done was done. He'd done everything he could, but it had still come to this. It was time to face his fate.

John basked in the indifference of the skies. Every breath he drew brought an understanding of the world at large with it. He was but a speck of dust, so short-lived and insignificant compared to even the fickle clouds that held sway over the life and death of everything below.

Something faint stirred at the thought of eternal clouds, perhaps it was his previous flawed understanding of the world at large.

It didn't matter. All his knowledge didn't matter. He was only a child, so very stupid and short-lived in comparison to the heavens.

The stirring intensified at that, but he could already feel that his superior in every way, the great messenger of the skies, was withdrawing from his body and mind. Its energies left swift as a gale, and he felt saddened at the fact that his mind would have to revert to that of a simple mortal's.

John blinked when he realised that he was standing back on solid ground again.

An irresistible feeling of nausea overwhelmed him in the next moment. He puked all over the ground.

A calloused hand holding a cup of water appeared in his vision in the next moment. John wiped the tears and snot away and thanked the person, rinsing his mouth before spitting it back out.

The boy looked up to thank his benefactor, but the next moment darkness crept into his vision. He wobbled, then fell.

He was already out cold by the time two pairs of hands caught him.