The lights flickering in the distance suddenly stopped. It was a very sudden stop—it felt so unnatural. My whole situation felt unnatural. It was unnerving. These lights, which had been my only companions for what seemed like forever, had stopped, frozen in their tracks. I felt kinda betrayed, like I had just been betrayed by a close friend.

“Have I arrived?” I called out into the darkness, hoping and fearful at the same time of any response. The only response I received was a resounding nothing. The only sound to be heard was the beating of my heart and my steady breaths, which sounded like drums in the silence. It seemed I was alone indeed.

“I guess this is better than falling,” I muttered under my breath. I suddenly snapped my head up. “Actually, why am I even whispering? I’m all alone, right?” I exclaimed, stunned at my own brilliance.

Out of the corner of my eye, some movement caught my attention.

“Shit, I totally jinxed myself,” I thought to myself. As I was mentally slapping myself for totally causing the problem, the lights that had been surrounding me my whole descent began to move again. But this time, they weren’t falling around me; instead, they were moving towards me.

“Ok, creepy stalker lights are a thing now,” I thought to myself as I tried to grasp my situation. The lights were making a beeline right for me, and not slowly—they were approaching very quickly.

As they drew closer, I could make out more details about them. The “lights,” as they came nearer, weren’t what I thought they were. They were more like small specks—yes, specks would be the best description of them. They weren’t round or identically shaped, but each was like a crystalline shard that seemed to flicker in and out of focus. These flickering specks came in a myriad of colors—reds, blues, greens, basically every shade of color imaginable. But like my dream (yeah, remember that), the colorful specks of lights were dominated by red and gold specks.

The red specks were a bright crimson that seemed to shred the darkness all around and left a trail of light behind them, while the gold specks were acting like twinkling stars, sparkling brighter than all the other lights as if they were showing off their pride as kings of the lights.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

In such a situation, like any sane person when confronted with what looked like an army of small colorful specks of lights attacking them, I ran.

“But Grant, aren’t you in like a dark abyss suspended in space and don’t you have nowhere to go or even any ground to run on?” Yes, you would be absolutely right, but cut me some slack—I bet you would have reacted the same way.

But all I managed to accomplish with my heroic attempt at a strategic retreat was just flailing around in the air, which, if I gotta be honest, wasn’t my finest moment. But hey, it’s been a long day.

In an instant, the specks of light reached me and didn’t stop—they were entering me.

“Oh great,” I thought. “They’re going to eat me from the inside.”

I waited for the pain to come, but strangely it didn’t. I cracked my eyes open, which had been clenched shut from the moment the lights had begun to enter me. The specks of light were continuing to be drawn to me and flooding into my body.

But strangely, instead of feeling any pain, I began to feel warm, like being embraced in a hug from a loved one. (Not that I would know much about that—remember, abandoned by my parents here.)

I began to feel a power that was growing inside of me, one that I noticed had always existed inside of me but was so minuscule that one would never discover it. It excited me, although I don’t know why. Some part of me was cheering and celebrating as the specks flooded into my very being. They felt empowering—a part of me that had been locked away was finally able to see the light of day.

As time passed, I began to grow hotter and hotter. It seemed these little buggers were attempting to cook me from the inside. My body had begun to absorb more of these things than I could handle. A few seconds later, I had begun to reach my limit. I felt like I was going to die. Even my clothes had begun to catch fire as they were ignited from only my body heat. I was literally catching fire.

My vision was getting blurry—I was barely able to make out the individual particles of light. Right before I began to pass out, everything seemed to stand still as the darkness that had become my companion for the longest time disappeared, to be replaced by a sudden flash of light.

As I slipped into unconsciousness, my last thought was, “Dying to a bunch of lights has got to be the fucking worst death ever.”

But just before darkness claimed my vision, I made out a figure amongst the light that had replaced the dark—a looming figure, one of dominance and power, a being that shouldn’t exist outside of myths and legends.

“Is that a FUCKING DRAGON?!”