John held the fruit of many years of hard work in his hands. It was a sleek, neat and deadly masterpiece of a rifle. The NP-993, an object that should, by all means, have been put in a museum centuries ago but had somehow found its way in John’s hands when he had still been a young man.

He raised the rifle and aimed at an approaching beast, then fired. There was a deafening crack, and the beast’s head exploded in gore and thick bone splinters.

A grin spread out on John’s face as he emptied the rest of the magazine, decimating the encroaching mob in the process. Each shot was perfect, magically finding its way into each beast’s instant-kill spots.

Just at that time, a giant dragon flew by overhead. John summoned an anti-air gun station and jumped into it, quickly shooting the fearsome beast down in a shower of bullets. ‘In the end, the technological difference is just too big. No amount of martial skill can bridge a technological gap spanning millennia,’ John thought as he let his weapons station rest.

Suddenly, the ground started shaking. A black line streaked across the ground like a lightning bolt, and the ground parted like water underneath John’s feet. Already unstable from the vibrations, the old man fell like a stone. His weapons station soon overtook him, rushing into the abyss like a bullet.

Naturally, he had been prepared for all possibilities. John summoned a jetpack right onto his shoulders, shaking a little as the thrusters took a moment to stabilise his body. He wiped the cold sweat off his brow. That had been uncomfortably close.

The old man glared at the bottomless abyss that had opened underneath him. Its mere presence gave his skin crawl. He fiddled with the jetpack controls in his hand, steering the jetpack away from that ominous hellhole.

He flew a minute in silence. Strangely, the marble stayed silent all the way through despite his attempts at contacting it.

The old man shook his head. It didn’t matter. He needed to-

The jetpack started sputtering and fizzling. John took a deep breath and fiddled with the controls again. His shaky hands almost made him mess up a few times.

‘Cool, stay cool or you’re gonna end up some bloody smear on a boulder. Cooler than ice, cooler than...cucumbers? Worse comes to worst, there’s still the built-in parachute.’

The dying engine provided him with a stable amount of propulsion, enabling him to smoothly glide towards the closest rocky outcropping. When there were only three metres between him and salvation, the engine sputtered for one last time before it stopped working.

For a timeless moment, John was weightless. Then, gravity asserted its dominance and dragged the old man down with ruthless efficiency. Shoving the panic welling up in his head aside, John yanked at the red handhold that was supposed to release the parachute

Nothing happened.

His heart hammering in his chest, John tried the backup. Nothing

His heart hammering in his chest, John retrieved his jetpack and searched his core for something that would slow his flight. Various knickknacks, board games, food and many more flashed past his mind. As interesting as all those might have been in other times, they wouldn’t help him get out of this situation alive. He could hear the wind screaming past his ears as his fall became faster and faster. The walls of the hole became ever larger, the sky soon becoming no more than a fleck of blue.

“MARBLE! HELP ME! I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE!”, John screamed, but it stayed silent.

There was something seriously wrong here. Could it be that it had tricked him all along? That was certainly not beyond it, but why support him all the way here when it could have had him killed off much sooner?

Then he could feel it.

Vast, ancient and powerful.

John could feel its gaze rest on him like a headlight shining on his face. It was too much. Far too much for a mere human to take.

?

A black membrane sprung up around him, somehow causing the entity to shift its attention to another place. Before John had a chance to question anything, he felt his feet connect with something and break into a thousand-

-shards of pain that woke him up with a seizure-like jerk. The boy gasped and shook, his armour clanking noisily. He shuddered, then stared at his young hands.

He wasn’t old yet. He was young. That had been a dream. Nothing but a dream.

When had he taken a wrong turn to have everything go to shit like that? The last part, especially, felt too real to be a mere dream. Fortunately, John just knew whom to turn to when something fishy was going on.

He prodded the marble with his mind, receiving feedback in the form of grunts and swears. A theory began to form in his mind, but he couldn’t confirm anything until the damn thing responded.

Being too awake to go to sleep again and having nothing else to do, John decided to meditate. Knowing his situation all too well, John prodded Ronnie awake to help him. Though the pale boy mumbled and grumbled at first, he eventually agreed to watch John whilst he meditated. Whilst John doubted that Ronnie would be able to detect anything going wrong with his aether, he could, at least, rely on the boy smacking him when he felt his attention wandering.

John sat up properly, an action borne out of habit rather than necessity. With a simple thought, his core released a stream of aether that entered his channels. It first flowed through the major channels, completing a full revolution through the torso and then flowing over to the limbs. Slowly but surely, he then worked it into the insides of his organs and bone marrow.

Time passed, and his aether permeated deeper and deeper. It soon filled his entire body, leaving no stretch without a vigorous aether supply. John concentrated harder, and the aether flow increased.

He was in the flow. He could do this. The more aether he managed to work into his deep tissues, the more comprehensive and greater the strengthening. The tendrils of aether continued thickening as the coursed through his body, the core replacing all the lost aether.

John’s concentration grew. This was the only way to become stronger. No matter how much aether he had, it would be useless if his channels and body couldn’t handle it.

That’s why he needed to be more precise, provide more aether. He might be weak now, but he hadn’t been cultivating for long. Though he couldn’t use aether senses yet, the fact that he had been the first to reach that step told him he was taking steps in the right direction.

Eventually, his aether had permeated all it could. But it felt incomplete, like something was missing. His aether felt more sluggish, but at the same time far freer than ever before.

‘What the hell?’ John slowed the circulation, the incongruence even clearer now that he was focusing on it. ‘When did this start?’

A bony fist struck John’s face before he could think any further. John opened his eyes and groaned, giving Ronnie his best glare whilst massaging his cheek. “What the hell was that for?”, he asked. Already, he could feel the circulation slow. Soon, the aether would retreat from the more obscure channels.

“You started frowning, so I hit you. You know you’re not in a position to get lost in cultivation.” Ronnie’s face was dead serious.

John deflated. “Thank you, I guess… no, never mind. I was just thinking. Try shaking me or something next time, okay?”

Ronnie nodded with a grin. “Sure thing boss. I’ll be gentle next time.”

John sighed and put the mischievous boy out of his mind. The sudden change in his aether was probably connected to the dream he had just had. He prodded the marble again but got nothing but a static of curses in return.

Deciding that he would ask Greg once he got a hold of him, John resumed his meditation until he felt his aether reach the eighty per cent mark, which was enough to sustain him at maximum power for almost an hour. Considering the dangerous situation they were in, he didn’t dare lower it any further.

John sent Ronnie back to sleep after that, soon remaining the sole awake person in the huge tent. His only companions were the soft breaths of children and the occasional metallic ring as they shifted in their sleep.

John had to admit that the children looked quite cute whilst they slept, dirty and exhausted as their faces might have been. They didn’t cause a ruckus or run around screaming.

They just slept, like kids that had been out playing all day and gone to bed without cleaning up. If it weren’t for the armour all of them wore…

John frowned, then slapped his face softly. They didn’t need his pity, just like he didn’t need the pity of anyone else. What they needed was the time and resources required to reach their potential, as well as a healthy dose of determination.

Not wanting to dwell on things he couldn’t change, John shifted his thoughts to the adults still fighting outside. When did they sleep? Or was it that they did not need to do so anymore after cultivating past a certain point? Even if their bodies didn’t need rest, however, their minds certainly would after a certain point. There was only so long people could go without a break.

Plenty of experiments with cybernetically enhanced humans had proven that fact, over and over again. The human mind simply wasn’t made for such activity. But then again, magic.

‘What a convenient way to explain everything you can’t understand,’ John thought. He shifted about.

He’d felt so close to achieving a breakthrough. Should he risk it?

John took a deep breath and suppressed his impulses. That was enough. There was no reason to take risks he didn’t need to. Slow and steady was the way to become stronger. Maybe once the marble was done and he was back in safety he could make another attempt.

Having thought things out this far, John was about to go to bed when he felt a shiver creep down his spine. He tried to shake it off, but the ominous pressure was impossible to shake off. It gradually strengthened, even, until the air felt stale and stifling.

Narrowing his eyes, John summoned his halberd and stood up. His gaze methodically swept the insides of the tent for any clues.

Nothing.

Everything was calm, just as it was supposed to be.

Why, then, was his gut screaming at him that something was wrong? It neither the tent nor the people inside. No, there was something in the air that made him uneasy. He could almost taste it, so vivid was the feeling.

John gulped. There was no way he could sleep under these conditions. His eyes shifted towards the tent flap. There should be a teacher standing guard right outside of it. Maybe they could tell him what was happening?

John tiptoed between his sleeping comrades, almost brushing some of them on the way. Fortunately, they were exhausted enough to sleep too deeply to awaken from mere brushes against their armours.

When John finally pushed the tent flaps aside, he was greeted by the sight of two unfamiliar teachers staring at the sky. Feeling his gut drop, John followed their gazes. Up and up he craned his neck, the sky becoming increasingly dark as he did so. When he looked straight up, he saw inky, roiling clouds gather directly above them.

He sniffed. It didn’t smell like a storm was coming up. A soft breeze blew across the clearing, carrying none of the tension he normally felt before a big storm, either.

But he could feel it flow across his skin and welling from the depths of his marrow; Something was coming. Something big and scary that would make him rue the day he was ever reborn if he ever so much as caught its attention.

John licked his lips, suddenly finding himself to be quite parched. He summoned his water flask and took a few calming sips. Quite a lot was spilt over his armour due to shaking hands, but he paid that no heed. Feeling calmer now, he prodded and knocked at the marble’s mental presence, but its cursing seemed to only have intensified.

He had an inkling that it knew what was going on and was probably doing everything in its power to prevent everything from going to shit. John hoped that it knew what it was doing. There was no way he could fight or outrun whatever was coming, and he doubted his teachers, powerful as they might be, could do much more than him.

“I hate my luck,” John said as he could feel the first hints of humidity gather in the air.

The winds picked up, and thunder rolled in the distant skies above their heads.

It was coming.