Chapter Three: A Suitable Host?

A few minutes prior...

The storm dragon's remaining consciousness drove itself through the sky to what it only hoped was an acceptable host. It didn't know how it knew that there was something in this direction, but it always trusted its intuition. Lightning followed it as it plowed through the sky. After all, it was using a lightning style technique to traverse through the stormclouds and enhance its speed. As a storm dragon, it was naturally gifted with both lightning techniques and cloud techniques, the former being more important right now.

As the dragon got nearer and nearer to the source of what could only be described as 'fate', that is if fate could be condensed into a feeling, it was somewhat puzzled by what it was seeing. It had expected someone more grown-up, not this little kid. Wait, no, he took it back; this wasn't a 'little' kid, but this guy was sure as hell not a grown man. This didn't stop the dragon's descent though, as his soul did, in fact, desperately need a host. The physical age of the hose was completely unimportant at the moment, what mattered most was that their souls were resonating very strongly as if they were the same person, reflections of themselves looking through the gap of dimensions at one another. The dragon was ecstatic upon realizing how perfect of a host he had found, so he wasted no time in making his entrance.

The sky rumbled and lightning drew arcs in the sky before condensing once more into the arrow that constructed the dragon's consciousness. The arrow oriented itself to point at its target before puncturing the air and bolting forward at a speed that had passed the speed of sound, roughly clocking in at 800 miles per hour. The dragon was planning to enter his host quickly through the side. The other party had turned his eyes towards the lightning bolt upon seeing it plowing through space towards him, which the dragon thought was a little bit weird. Small chains of thoughts flew through his mind as he himself flew through the air, 'Aren't I breaking the sound barrier? how can this kid track my movement?'. As he was thinking, the kid abruptly turned to face the lightning bolt, seemingly trying to take a defensive position.

If the dragon wasn't seconds away from dissipating into nothingness, it would've faltered and stopped dead in its tracks, all he could do now though was scream in his mind. "What the fuck?! Am I seeing things straight? Mortals shouldn't be able to react nearly this fast. What is with this kid?' The dragon ranted to himself as he drove closer to the kid's chest. Of course, this little bit of movement didn't actually inhibit him from entering the host, it's just that the kid's reaction time had stunned the dragon, it seemed that he had truly lucked out on finding a good host. The electric arrow finally made contact with the kid's skin and split up to enter through the skin pores. As James let out an anguished cry, the dragon thought to himself. 'This poor kid... As a mortal, this has got to be the worst pain that he's felt in his whole life. But with what he's been chosen to do, I doubt this will be the last time he feels so much pain...'. If the dragon had a face it would be showing a very somber expression. He had found a good host who could likely save what little would be left of the world, but he had taken away the rest of his normal life.

The dragon suddenly stopped this train of thought as the last bits of electricity seeped through James' skin, if he didn't choose this kid, he would die a horrible and painful death anyway. No matter what he did, the rest of James' childhood would have to be ruined. The electricity sped through James' flesh and into his heart before riding up different veins and arteries straight into his brain. James had passed out almost as soon as the dragon's consciousness touched his heart because the pain had just gotten too unbearable. The dragon silently gave his approval; normal people would likely pass out almost as soon as the electricity shocked their skin. He was starting to like this kid more and more.

With the dragon now having a host, it was able to use much more of its power, albeit sparingly. He used his mental force to float James up and over to the grass so he wouldn't fall back to the hard concrete. The dragons nonexistent gave a satisfactory nod before receding further into the depths of the teen's mind.

___

James was a little confused, he had experienced being knocked out before, and it was like he just blacked out and couldn't think or see as if there was just a gap in his memory. But this time was different, he was standing with nothing on him but some sweatpants in a pitch-black void that seemed to stretch onward infinitely. As he was checking out his environment, clouds condensed far above his head, and purple flashes streaked through the air. Soon enough, a giant purple dragon that was almost a hundred feet long plunged down and out of the storm. The dragon then landed a couple of hundred feet in front of him. The creature paused for a second before walking towards him, but something was off. This behemoth was clearly walking towards him, but in his perspective, the dragon stayed the same size; shouldn't something look bigger the closer it got to him? The dragon finally came merely a few feet away from James and sat down almost like a cat. It was only a couple of feet tall now, but it still held a very powerful and menacing presence but did not seem cruel. It was then that James realized that the dragon had simply shrunk while it walked, what a weird space this was.

"Who are you? Where the fuck am I? Why the hell did I literally get struck by lightning?" James shot forth three questions at once, only hoping that the dragon would answer all of them.

The dragon let out a growling chuckle and scratched its head with its hind paw like some sort of house dog. "Relax, take a seat. We have plenty of time in here, so I want to make sure I explain everything thoroughly..." James heard these words and was startled. The dragon's mouth hadn't moved, but he knew that this sentence belonged to the creature in front of him because there was simply no one else around. The dragon continued, "The very least you need to know is that we are in your consciousness, which I must say is very vast for a mortal, a couple of figurative miles in size and pretty tidy; you must have a very clear head most of the time." The dragon complimented before getting back to the important information, "I am from another realm, and your whole world is in danger. Merging my soul with yours is the only way that I could stay alive, and I am going to have to train you to survive what's coming," The dragon decided that the briefest of briefings were good and over with so it decided to tell its backstory in breathtaking detail. It was almost as impressive as the physical description in the previous chapter of this novel; truly amazing, isn't it?

"So either this is really important, and I really need to listen to what you're saying right now, OR I'm hallucinating because I just got struck by lightning and fainted. Either way, I think we should at least take this inside, don't you agree?" James pointed to his skull and said, "let's just get out of here and get inside for now, okay?"

The dragon seemed miffed because of James doubting his existence, but he nonetheless nodded his head without any words and vanished from the spot. Upon realizing that this was his own mind, James felt a lot of control at his fingertips and soon figured out how to exit in what felt like a few seconds.

James opened his eyes to see that he was still falling, and although confused, he still braced himself for impact against the hard concrete of the street. But to his pleasant surprise, James landed on the nice soft grass in his front yard. The dirt was soft from the rain, but not muddy, as it hadn't been storming for too long yet. He got himself up, felt his chest, and... Not a single burn mark? James was surprised yet again, but quickly calmed down and headed back towards his room's window that he snuck out through.

James wasn't the only one pleasantly surprised. The dragon realized that it had set its expectations too low for this kid yet again. The conversation in their now shared consciousness lasted what felt to be roughly ten or fifteen minutes, but in reality, James' body had fallen barely halfway to the ground, taking less than a second in real-world time.

James stopped himself halfway through the window when something clicked in his head. He was in the middle of the street, there was no way that he could've ended up on the grass, there was only one good explanation for this. What happened in his mind just now had to be real, but until now James had only thought that it was something his brain had cooked up to explain the portal incident in China. He still couldn't be 100% sure, but he started shaking at the thought of what was happening.

James hopped down from his window and back into his room before quickly reinstalling the screen on his window and shutting it. He had snuck out this way countless times before, nowadays it took him less than ten seconds to fully reinstall his window's screen.

James sat down in the middle of his floor and closed his eyes. 'You there? How the hell am I supposed to get your attention anyway?' James thought that this was a little bit stupid but decided that there was really no other way to get this done.

"I can hear literally every single thought that you have, you don't have to worry about getting my attention, what is it that you want?" the dragon spoke in a gentle voice as if trying to make James feel a little less freaked out.

'What should I call you, and how do I know that you're real and I'm not just hallucinating or something?' James thought in a panicked mental tone.

"I don't have a name, but I do have a title, everyone simply called me as Storm Dragon, it's all I've ever been called, so I suppose you could call it my name. As for how to prove my existence? I hope you won't mind me possessing a small portion of your body..." Storm Dragon ended on a questioning and almost concerned tone, like a shy toddler asking its mom to buy it a piece of candy.

'Sure sure, just don't like make me blow up or something,' James let out a very light chuckle with the thought, but then he lost feeling in his right hand's middle and index finger. Electricity started sparking between the two fingers like they were two charged metal rods. The electric currents slowly faded before James felt his connection with his two fingers was re-established.

He let out a gasp, 'No. Fucking. Way.' James was at a loss for words, just what the fuck was going on?!?

Right as James was about to get up, his door creaked open to show his mother looking very tired. "It's getting late, I know it's hard to sleep with all those damn storms going on, but you should get to bed," James' mother spoke bluntly.

"Watch what you say about my fucking storms woman..." the dragon grumbled under his breath.

James ignored it and simply replied, "Yeah sure, I was just thinking about something from earlier," James held his breath as his mother left the room, and he walked over to his bed once he saw the door click shut.

'I know all this shit just happened and everything, but like, can I go to bed now?' James grumbled in his mind, clearly directing these words at the Storm Dragon.

"Yeah yeah whatever, we'll start training you up tomorrow," the storm dragon said indifferently.

"Wait what kind of traini-..." James was abruptly cut off as he was immediately pulled into a deep sleep by the dragon's spell technique.