That didn’t strike him as likely. Not when it came to Lorach.
He’d seen dragon bone swords, knives, and other decorations, but that wouldn’t be reason enough for the Dragon Souls to have gone searching for bones.
“This is different,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure what Lorach was up to, but I suspect they were after something.”
“I have faith that you will figure out what is going on,” she said, waving her hand.
His mother wasn’t going to be helpful with that, either.
She turned her attention back to Kayla. “She does have a connection to them, doesn’t she?”
Jason followed the direction of her gaze, looking over to the dragon yard. Kayla had crouched in front of a small dragon, and she held her hand out. Even from here, Jason could feel how that connection had formed, the way that the dragon received her. There was enough of a bond between the two of them, enough of a connection that he could feel it, and he recognized just what it was that Kayla was doing. Even if she didn’t.
He smiled to himself.
“She does have a connection,” he said.
“Will you work with her?”
“When I have time,” Jason said.
“I suppose that will have to do.”
“It will have to do,” he said. “I have other things that I am responsible for.” And perhaps that was what he needed to get back to. It was long past time for him to return, to search for Sarah’s parents, and for him to figure out what it was that Lorach was up to.
Because he knew they were up to something. They were always up to something.
Then there was what the night dragon had said.
Time is running short.
Jason had no idea how much the night dragon actually knew, but there still was something unusual about what he experienced, something unusual about the energy within him, that left Jason thinking that perhaps he knew more than he should.
He looked over to his mother, but she had already moved on, heading over to the dragon yard and watching Kayla.
Perhaps his father would have been proud of Jason, but his mother was obviously proud of his sister.
Without Kayla, his mother wouldn’t even be here any longer. She wouldn’t have survived the time in the mountains without Kayla’s care, so he understood. It didn’t make it any easier for him, though.
He tore his gaze away, focused on the ice dragon.
“Are you ready to search?”
The dragon circled overhead, and through the ice dragon, Jason was aware of the cold, a familiar sensation to him, even now when he was in Dragon Haven. It didn’t worry him, or even bother him. It was merely familiar.
Within his mind, he felt a roar of approval.
The dragon was ready. Eager, even.
He had to be ready, as well.
He looked over to the heart of Dragon Haven. Sarah needed him to find her parents. And he needed to find what Lorach was after.
Before other dragons were hurt.
5
The search along the border of the forest in Lorach yielded nothing. No sign of any dragon remains or the bones the dragons had been carrying. Jason continued flying with the iron dragon, streaking over the ground but staying high overhead, but even as he looked, he didn’t see anything useful. There was no sense of energy down below, either.
There was no doubt in his mind that Jessica and her Dragon Souls had been after something here. He could not imagine that she would’ve sent so many dragons out here for just bones though. He probed with the energy coming from the iron dragon, adding the power of the ice dragon, mingling the two and sweeping it across the landscape. There was nothing. Every so often, he mixed in the sense of the forest dragon as well, thinking that if he were to be able to add that sense to what he was doing, he might find more answers, but every time he tried to do so, he didn’t uncover anything new.
The last time that he had seen Jessica, she’d tried to give power to a misfit egg, and he’d thought she’d succeeded until seeing the remains of the dragon. He had searched since destroying Lorren, pushing Jessica back, but had not found anything.
Why had they come with dragon bones now?
Answers were needed.
Not only about what sort of misfits had Jessica managed to hatch, but also about the misfits that Lorren had been working with. Jason was going to need to go after them, to try to understand what Lorren had been doing with them, and he was going to need to find some way to offer them a connection to others who would protect them. He didn’t have any idea if they would listen. Those dragons had protected Lorren, and more than that, they had stayed with him. They had wanted to be with him, to protect him. This despite what Lorren had done to them.
And he still had not seen any sign of Sarah’s parents. All of this fed into each other. Jason was certain of it, but he had no idea how.
He tapped on the iron dragon’s side and they came to land near a wide, flowing river. Water burbled nearby, and as Jason focused on the sense of the river, he didn’t detect anything more than that burbling. If only he could reach the river dragon.
“Do you feel anything here?”
The iron dragon sniffed the air and slithered along the ground, heat radiating along his sides. “No,” he finally said, circling around and facing Jason.
Focusing on the energy of the ice dragon high overhead, he called to the dragon, summoning him. The ice dragon answered, roaring with a loud rumbling sound, and began to descend from high overhead. Awareness of the ice dragon drifted through the bond between them, the cold radiating up from someplace deep within him.
The ice dragon came hurtling out of the sky, coming to land on the ground near him. He breathed in, his icy sides glistening, spikes protruding outward.
“I needed you closer. I can’t quite find anything,” he said.
The dragon moved closer to him and a cold fog drifted from the dragon, sweeping away. “Nothing more than what was here before.”
“What do you mean what was here before? I don’t know that there was anything here before,” Jason said.
“I can feel it,” the ice dragon said. “It comes from someplace deep within the ground, connected to this land.”
Jason closed his eyes, wanting to know if there was any reason Jessica might have found this place valuable. Knowing what he did of Lorach, knowing how they used the land, he couldn’t help but feel as if there was something important about this place.
He detected a twinge. It was faint, subtle, but the more that he paid attention to it, the more certain he was that it was there. Distantly, there was another sensation that he continued to detect. At first, he thought that it was something that was only in his mind, but the more that he felt it crackling within him and the energy bubbling up from someplace deep inside him, the more certain he was that it was there. That it was real.
The storm dragon.
It was unusual for Jason to feel anything when it came to the storm dragon. Unusual that he would even notice the dragon in that way.
Still, the storm dragon had responded to his request before. The storm dragon had helped him with the night dragon egg and had helped him defeat Lorren.
He needed to bond to the storm dragon the way that he had the others, and needed to get to know him somehow.
He could feel something else sizzling up within him. It was there, deep within him. It rumbled.