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.

Ron woke against the dragon's jaw. The sword lay where the tail had curled around it, warm now, humming under the purple veins. He crawled to it. His small fingers closed on the hilt. The hum climbed into his arm and stopped at his shoulder, blocked by something he could not name. He pulled. The blade lifted, but the edge felt dull against the air, as if the sword were holding back. He swung it at a chunk of black stone. The stone split. That was strength, not the sword. He knew the difference already. The blade wanted to do more and would not. He hit the stone again. Sparks jumped. Nothing else came. The dragon watched with one yellow eye. Ron ignored it. He dragged the sword across the crater toward the broken tower. Water still fell from the high arches and stopped mid-air. Under the spinning rings stood a growth of black crystal, taller than the dragon's shoulder, wrapped in soft yellow mist. The mist moved against the wind. Ron walked up to the crystal and set the sword's point against it. He leaned his weight in. The tip did not chip the crystal. The hum in the blade climbed higher, past his shoulder, into his teeth. He bit down and pushed harder. The crystal answered. A thread of yellow mist crawled up the blade and sank into the veins of purple light. The sword shook in his hand. Ron held on. The shaking climbed his arm and rattled his ribs. He laughed through it. The blade split open along its length. It did not break. It unmade itself. Metal peeled into pieces smaller than sand, then smaller than that, until a cloud lifted off the hilt and hung in the air above his fist. The cloud shimmered. Tiny machines spun inside it, each one a box of gears and light, packed against the next. They moved as one thing. They waited. Ron stared. He opened his hand. The cloud drifted down and settled on his palm without weight. He closed his fingers. The machines flowed between them like water and did not spill. He thought of the stone he had split. The cloud jumped from his hand and struck the nearest boulder. The boulder came apart into gravel in one breath. The cloud returned to his palm. Ron laughed again, louder now. He had wanted the sword's edge. He had gotten something else. The blade was gone. The hilt lay empty at his feet. Behind him, the dragon rose onto its claws and backed away one step. The yellow mist around the crystal thinned. Ron looked at the empty hilt, then at the swarm resting on his hand. He had no blade anymore. He had a swarm, and it obeyed. He picked up the hilt and imagined the sword again and they re made the sword but lighter faster and full of light and dark energy.

Ron slept on the crater floor with the reforged sword across his chest. He did not wake for a long time. When he did, his arms were heavy in a new way. His shirt no longer fit. His legs stretched past the dragon's foreleg. He sat up and looked at his hands. They were a man's hands now, thick at the knuckle, scarred at the thumb. The dragon stirred beside him. Its head lifted on the long neck. The yellow eye found him and held. Ron reached for the sword. The blade lit under his fingers, purple veins waking through the dark metal, thin blue lines running to the point. A voice moved inside his skull. It did not use his ears. It was low and dry and amused. You have aged in your sleep. You are a man now. How nice to meet you, lord. Ron stood. The dragon rose with him, wings half open, taller than the broken tower behind it. Horns curled back from its skull. Scales ran green and black down its throat. It did not bow. It watched him the way a hawk watches a field. "You talk," Ron said. I always did. You could not hear me before. Ron felt the shape of the problem. He had forced the dragon's head down once as a child. That was muscle. The creature had lain beside him out of respect for pain. Respect was not loyalty. Nothing tied it to him. If it flew now, it would go, and it would come back with teeth. He stepped forward. The dragon's chest rumbled but the head did not move. Ron opened his hand over the hilt. The blade came apart. The swarm lifted off his palm in a slow cloud, each machine a spark of light and dark. The dragon's eye tracked the cloud. You would unmake me. "I would remake you," Ron said. "Choose." The cloud drifted closer to the long throat. The dragon could have burned him. It could have taken the sky in two beats. It did neither. The yellow eye narrowed and then lowered. The great head came down. The horns touched the black stone at Ron's feet. Falcore, the voice said. That is my name. Use it. Ron set his hand between the horns. The swarm settled on the scales along the neck and sank in. He felt it thread through the dragon like a suit of armor plating the dragon not a leash but more of a friendly embrace to show the dragon it was his friend. Rise, Ron said, and did not speak aloud. The dragon rose. Ron climbed onto the shoulder. The crater fell away below him. He had a sword that obeyed. He had a mount that obeyed. The armor held and was astral, but there was a stir Ron could sense.