Ron dangol johnson's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The infant crushed the landing crater beneath him and laughed. Ron Dangol Johnson had been born three hours earlier on a world he would never see again, and now he lay on black stone that pulled at his bones with three hundred times the weight of Earth. The stone had cracked, not him. A spiked tuft of blond hair stuck up from his skull. His small fist opened and closed around empty air, as if testing what he could break next. A sword lay across the crater with him. Its blade was dark as deep sky, veined with purple lightning that pulsed in time with his breathing. Someone from far away had sent it with him. Ron did not know why yet. He only knew the hilt fit his hand when he reached for it, even though his hand was too small to hold it. Above him rose a broken tower of pale stone. Water fell from its high arches and never reached the ground. Rings of blue and pink light spun around its middle, and the air inside those rings tore open and closed again, over and over. Chunks of rock hung in the spin. This was the place his power had chosen for him. He would learn its name later. For now, it was simply the thing that hummed when he cried. Something landed at the crater's edge. The ground shook. Ron turned his head. The dragon lowered its horned skull until one yellow eye filled Ron's whole sky. Teeth longer than the baby's arm framed a slow, careful breath. Steam rolled over Ron's face. The dragon had come to eat him, or to test him, or to bow. Even the dragon did not seem sure. Ron reached up and grabbed one of its fangs. The dragon went still. Ron pulled. The great head tipped down with him, forced by a strength no infant should have. The stone under the dragon's foreclaws split. Ron laughed again, high and wet, and let go. The dragon drew its head back slowly. It folded one tan wing across the crater like a roof and lay down beside him. Its breath warmed the stone. Its tail curled around the sword. Ron closed his fingers on a scale at the dragon's jaw and held on. The weight of the planet pressed down on both of them. Neither moved. In the tower behind them, the torn air kept spinning, waiting. He had survived the fall. He had claimed the beast. The blade lay within reach. The gravity that should have crushed him now felt like a blanket, and somewhere under his ribs a want began to form, older than words: more. More strength. More years. More things that would obey. The dragon shifted its wing. Ron slept against its jaw, one small hand still fixed to the scale, the other open toward the sword.