Chapter 20) I Am...

'Where am I? It's so dark in here.'

I looked all around me and saw nothing but an endless void. I was falling, but no matter how long I waited I didn't seem to be moving or making any progress. I didn't know which way was up or down, and I was beginning to panic. My breathing grew short and labored, and my head began to pound fiercely. I screamed out into the void.

"Anyone!"

"Please!"

"Just show me something! Anything! I don't want to be alone anymore..."

A single tear fell from my face down into the abyss, and a loud water drop sound reverberated through out the void. The void below me seemed to ripple and soon, a blinding white platform emerged. I lightly landed on my feet and wiped my face. I took another glance around me but nothing else seemed to have changed. I decided to sit down for a moment to re-center myself.

'You have to stay calm. Focus. Clear your mind of all your baggage. Recite your code.'

"Every breath brings you a step further. Every action has its reaction. Every mind holds a will, and where there is a will, there is change. The body holds a furnace full of potential, and it takes someone other than yourself to stoke the fires. Change that. Stoke the internal fire and let it rage through you. No cold will phase you. No heat will be stronger than your own. Breathe Jay. Breathe."

Unbeknownst to myself, the void was pulsating with every word uttered. It shook stronger with every word, and when I finished, there was no pause to the pulses. The void rumbled as my eyes snapped open. I got up from my position and once again took a glance around. Off in a certain direction, a speck of light could be seen.

'Well now I have something to work for.'

I gave my legs a quick stretch, then imagined a pathway forming out of the material I had been standing on. Unsurprisingly, it worked.

'Seems I really am inside my head. Well then, lets get to it.'

I bolted down the path I had created with lightning speed, making my way towards the distant light.

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Tricia was pacing back and forth gnawing on her fingernail. We were standing inside Jason's room with him out cold on his bed. Tricia had come running to me earlier shouting about how he had just suddenly blacked out with no warning right in front of her and needing help carrying him. I had come rushing over and quickly snatched him up to bring him to his room.

'Why is it everyone around me seems to like being out cold whenever I leave them alone for a few goddamn seconds? It is easy to stay awake, I mean look at me! I'm fine all the time.'

I asked her if he had hit his head on anything when he crumpled and she replied with a shake of her head.

'This is not what I planned for you guys to do to grow closer damn it! Jay I hope you wake up soon cause the poor girl is having an existential crisis over this whole thing. God she's crushing hard. One week of living together and you'd think she's known us for years already. Frankly speaking its infuriating that she had him open up so easily, although in hindsight, he gets along better with mother hen types.'

I sat in the corner of the room and finally had enough of Tricia's pacing.

"Could you sit down for 5 minutes? You pacing around isn't gonna solve any of this. Go and grab some water and some towels, he might be like this for a while."

She turned to face me now with just a single question.

"Has this happened before?"

I nodded my head.

"Too many times to count. Its why I haven't bothered notifying the ambulance. This always happens when he overclocks his brain. He has a weird amount of bodily control so he can just turn off whatever he isn't actively using so that the energy can be applied somewhere else, which usually ends up being his brain. This'll last anywhere from a few minutes, to a couple of days."

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'No matter how far I've run it still seems so distant. It has gotten a little bigger but still, it will take days if my internal clock is working correctly.'

I had already been running for what felt like hours and made almost no progress towards reaching the ball of light in the distance. I could only imagine how enormous it must be up close.

As I absentmindedly ran towards this thing I noticed I could simulate using magic in here, and decided to pass the time while running, to practice further with my manipulation of mana. With swishing and flicking motions, I had the mana perform various tasks, whether it be flowing like an everlasting stream, or making intricate little shapes and symbols that gradually grew more complex in nature. I ran and ran, slowly losing myself to the passage of time, growing ever closer to the light. Each second bled into a minute, a minute into an hour, and so on until I had felt like I had been here for years, growing ever more versatile with mana manipulation. It felt like with a single thought, my imagination could shape reality however I saw fit.

I could finally see just how gargantuan the ball of light truly was, as I was still quite a distance from its base, and I still seemed like a speck of dust in comparison. I felt a deep pulse with every few meters I got closer. It was like a large sun with a beating heart, as every thump rumbled the atmosphere around us. I felt an almost paternal feeling between myself and this ball of light, almost as though it were my child.

'Alright Jay, stop thinking such nonsense. You know damn well you've never done the deed with someone, let alone have a kid as you're a dude. I think I've been in here way too long. I need to reach this thing by tomorrow.'

With that, I used all of my newfound insights into mana and boosted my speed by hundreds of times. The void let out a restless rumble in response to my actions and I watched the ball grow so close I could almost lay my hands on it.

'Just a little more...'

A thundering sound echoed out as I slammed right into the sphere of light.

'That....did not go as planned.'

I rubbed my nose and promptly stood up.

'Now that I'm here, lets see if I can make it pocket sized. Hehehe'

I put both hands on it and slowly captured the entirety of the sphere into my perception. It took many hours before I finally sealed it with my will.

'Now, lets compress the bastard!'

Slowly, ever so slowly, the ball began collapsing in on itself. I stayed there for what felt like even more years, as I forced the enormous sun sized sphere to condense and slowly become smaller. After what I perceived to have been a decade, I had finally made the sphere smaller, by 1/10 the original size! I had barely done a thing! Or so I thought.

In the center of sphere, unnoticed by me, a figure was developing, formed purely out of the compressed energy I had accumulated! As it opened its eyes, I found that the rest of my figure in here was fading in and out of existence.

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'Where am I?'

'What am I doing?'

'What should I be doing?'

…..

'Who am I?'

~

"Jason! Jason!"

I watched him fall to the floor with a loud crack sound, as his front half cave into the ground as though an enormous weight had fallen from a great height. Spiderwebs manifested across the tile flooring. I looked around in shock before pushing the damage to the back of my mind. 'I have to check on him. He may be having another episode.'

I came forward and took note he was completely out cold, with a feverish heat radiating off him. 'He is way worse than last time. Is he seriously this focused on correcting himself? Hell, he actually took my words at face value and actively started working with it? Why do I feel like he's just a computer going through a software update?'

It didn't take long before Nick came into the room to assess the problem. I told him about it and when he tried to pick Jason up, a new problem cropped up.

"Why in the Kentucky fried fuck is he so damn heavy?! I feel like he's gained like 400 lbs. all of a sudden. I don't even think I can really drag him out the pit. Screw this, I'll just flip him over so he doesn't suffocate."

With my help, we somehow managed to get him onto his back. Afterwards silence ensued and all we heard was Jason's breathing getting progressively more ragged. Our worry only grew when the room got noticeably more hot, and realized the heat was radiating off of Jason himself.

'Jason. Please wake up before you burn your whole house down!'

~

I've been here for what seems like ages. My perception feels muffled and muted. All I have are my thoughts, and they are scattered all over the place.

As I fall, memories fly by, and things I didn't realize I even knew, began to surface.

As I pass by one memory, I hear a distorted, childlike voice.

"Mom....Dad....Where are you?....I'm scared....It's so dark in here...."

The voice fades as a new memory flies by.

"AAAAughhhh"

The child's screams are interlaced with the sound of crackling electricity.

A muffled voice in the same memory cuts through.

"We can't keep doing this to him! I understand his body was weak, but he's still our son! I'd rather be with him until his body gives out normally than for this torture to continue! The experiment data has already been analyzed, and the genomes are going to stay dormant until he matures. There is no way to speed this up....Please....just let me stop this honey...."

One heavy, male voice responds: "...No...Give it 48 more hours at least....If there is no change still, then your little bit of sympathy can take hold and I'll allow you to do as you wish."

The screaming amps back up and loud sobbing emanates from the background and the memory glides on by.

'Did I really....Was I really being tested on by mom and dad?'

'Was dad always that...cold? With me? How did I bury this so deep?'

'This all begs the question though...just what AM I?'

A memory was hurtling towards me now.

'Well, its seems my answer is literally gonna hit me in the fa-'

A flash of light, and my conscience disappears into the window of my memory.

~

"I need more buckets of water and ice over here! He's hit a new stage!"

Tricia ran off after dropping off some more water, and without any reservation I tossed all of it onto Jason. His body had just now started charring the ground around him while lightning flickered over different parts of his body.

'What the hell is even going on? Since when could he go torch and start powering up like some super warrior? This is too crazy!'

As I finished that thought, all of the suffocating heat and pressure suddenly dispersed, leaving the whole room in a weird state of anxiety giving silence.

'Huh? Just like that its all ov-'

All the steam and lightning snakes flew right back into Jason's body before he detonated into a flash of frost. The room dropped to bone-chilling temps and now a whole new wave of annoying elemental discharge was being released.

"OH COME ON!!!"

~

"Jason, my precious baby boy. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. I didn't want all of this to have happened. I didn't want any of it."

My mother wept as she held me, rocking back and forth, as my life was fading with every moment that passed.

'Mommy don't cry. I'm just tired. When I wake up we can play with Luna like we always do.... Mommy it is a little cold in here though....I'm happy your hug is so warm....'

As my body began to still, my conscience starts looking at the surroundings from a 3rd person perspective. I see my mother bawling her eyes out while holding me, I see my father caved into a nearby wall, and then I take note of the worst part.

The blood.

Everywhere I looked, there was blood. It was caked on the walls, medical tools, cabinets, chairs. The room looked like the inside of a meat grinder.

'What the hell happened here? Am I dying?'

So many new questions formed, but seemingly no answers. Until I heard it.

"Your time has yet to come. No escape is open for you. You must perform your duties as the Sentinel. YOU. MUST. WAKE. UP!"

Upon the moment that my younger self's heart stopped beating, that voice crashed into the recesses of my mind. My mother's eyes snapped open with absolute shock as my fresh corpse became enshrouded in a dazzling array of energy. My body slowly started lifting away from my mother, and all of the unfastened objects in the room started trembling. I didn't realize it before, but my eyes had used to be a regular brown. Something absolutely ordinary. As my eyes slowly opened back then, I watched as the color shifted to a deep, stormy grey. The brown easily eaten away, my new eyes began to shimmer and glow, my skin became vibrant and full of life, and my surroundings all but seemed dull in comparison to the radiance that I was putting out.

'What the hell is happening to me?! How could I ever forget something like this???!!!'

As the radiance grew in intensity, I heard my younger self speak in almost an ancient voice.

" I am the fire that burns all enemies to ash. I am the wind that carries soldiers ship's homeward. I am the shield that graces you with one final chance. I, am the Sentinel birthed at the dawn of a new age. May light shine down, and shadows heed my call."

With that final statement, a gentle pulse of light hit my mother and father, and my body descended to the ground, the aura slowly dissipating.

The moment I watched my body crumple to the ground, the surroundings started crumbling away to darkness. The memory was releasing me back into the void of my mind, but my body stayed planted to the ground.

'I'm the Sentinel of the new age, huh? That works I guess. Wish the title came with an info packet or something.'

I looked up into my void, watching as all my stray thoughts got pushed to the sides slowly developing an orbit of sorts. In the center slept an enormous steely silver colored western dragon. It's whole being took up the scope of my vision. When it felt my gaze, it slowly lifted its gargantuan head and looked right at me. A primordial voice resonated in my mind:

" So you've woken up a bit, have you? It's about damn time. My old bones were beginning to rust. (yawns lazily) I bet you're wondering just what I am, aren't you boy?"

I gingerly nodded my head.

A toothy smile crossed the old dragon's face.

"I am one of the sole four Primogenitors of the Dragon Race, the second son of the only Dragon God, and most importantly, the physical manifestation of the Sentinel's power. In other words boy."

His face drew as close as possible to me at that moment.

"I am you. You are me. We are one and the same, the moment you drew breath in the universe, we became a single entity."

His figure shimmered before slowly collapsing and compressing, slowly taking on a familiar form. As the little light show came to an end, I stared at the mirror image of myself, albeit with silver hair instead of my usual color.