“And if we don’t?”
He needed to pick his words carefully. “If we don’t, Dragon Haven will continue.”
He thought that was her concern, though he didn’t know if that was it or not. It was more about the safety of her parents, about worrying about what had happened to them and whether there was anything she could do to bring them back.
“I know Dragon Haven will continue. I’m not worried about that. There are enough people here, and dragons, that the city will survive. Thrive, even. It’s been a long time since we’ve had this many dragons freed within the city.” She looked at Jason, locking eyes with him. “All of that is because of you. That’s why I wondered if there’s anything that you might be able to do to help my parents, and to see if we might be able to help rescue them.”
“If we know where to look, then I would be willing to do anything to rescue them,” he said, and he meant it.
Searching for her parents was something that he didn’t know if he was be best suited for, but rescuing them did fit him. Not only did it fit him, but it fit the strengths he now possessed.
“You mean that?”
“I do,” he said.
She breathed in heavily, stared at the page, and then nodded. “See what you can find along the border here,” she said. “And continue to free as many of the dragons as you can.”
“I will.” He hesitated, thinking she might suggest that she would come with him, but in the days since her parents had disappeared, Sarah hadn’t tried to come with him.
Of course, by default, she had begun to rule in Dragon Haven.
She was royalty here. The idea of it had amused him at first, enough that he teased her about it, but he had also realized very quickly that she wasn’t willing to tolerate any sort of teasing like that. Given that her parents had disappeared, Jason understood.
He got up, nodded, and then leaned down, wrapping her in a quick hug.
Sarah stiffened for a moment before relaxing and breathing out.
Jason thought about something he might be able to say to her, anything he might be able to offer to appease her, but there were no words that he could say, nothing that he could do, that would reassure her.
There was nothing.
Instead, he held her for a moment, his arms around her, and they stayed like that until she pulled away and turned her attention back to the papers in front of her.
3
The iron dragon surged with heat. Power undulated beneath him, flowing from head to toe, surging through him. There was a sense of it radiating down his length. The power of the iron dragon was unique amongst the dragon misfits. While not summoning all the heat that he could, he seemed to draw only a little bit of power, leaving his body looking like gleaming silver metal. When calling upon the power of fire, heat surged through him and energy filled him, leaving him glowing, practically molten metal.
Jason maintained their connection, holding on to the power and the bond that he shared with the iron dragon, feeling it as it flowed through the dragon. He looked out through the dragon’s eyes, staring down at the landscape. The dragon saw everything below him in bursts of color. Heat and energy and a brightness and vibrancy bound the dragon to everything below him.
In this case, Jason made out the brightness along with the dragon, staring at the shifting landscape below them. There came the energy of the heat rolling off the dragon. Some of that energy came in the form of a soft glowing light, and some of it came in the form of contours rolling across the landscape.
“Are you seeing anything?” he asked the iron dragon.
“I see what you see,” the iron dragon said.
“I don’t see anything, but I’m not as comfortable looking through your eyes.”
“Yet you do it easily,” the iron dragon said.
Jason smiled to himself. The iron dragon allowed him to reach for that connection and borrow it, surging through it, but he still enjoyed the idea that he could taunt Jason about the lack of ability on his part.
“There is something down there,” Jason said.
“There is something,” the dragon said.
As Jason stared, he tried to determine if what he detected was anything useful, but he wasn’t able to tell. As he stared into the distance, looking from this vantage, he searched for movement.
They had taken to hunting in this way.
When they left Dragon Haven, they searched for Dragon Soul dragons, and he was prepared for the possibility that he might need to add ice and iron together, healing those dragons, but partly that was a matter of searching for movement, something that would give him a way of finding the dragons that had to exist down there. Jason hadn’t seen anything yet.
“Why do you think they’ve been trailing along that border?”
The iron dragon was troubled, and Jason could feel it through their connection. He had shared with the iron dragon, along with the ice and forest dragon, what Sarah had shared with him.
None of them had known quite why the Dragon Souls would have been searching along the border. None of them had any idea whether there was anything there that they needed to be concerned about, or whether there was anything that Lorach would have discovered.
“I cannot tell.”
Jason looked with the iron dragon, straining for whatever reason the Dragon Souls might have for being out here, but even as he stared, he could come up with nothing. There was no answer, no sign of what they were after, just the presence of the Dragon Souls.
The iron dragon turned, shifting course, when a flurry of winged movement caught both his and Jason’s attention at the same time. It was like a flurry of birds in the distance, though Jason knew that was not the case. No birds moved like that. No birds radiated the energy that these did. No birds circled the way these did.
Dragons.
There had to be nearly a dozen of them.
He focused on the sense of the dragons, pushing out with a connection to the ice and iron dragons, radiating that power out from him. He tapped on the iron dragon’s side, motioning for him to turn.
“Are you sure?” the iron dragon asked.
“You don’t think we can handle a dozen Dragon Souls?”
“I can,” the iron dragon roared.
There was a hint of the anger and rage that still boiled within the iron dragon, anger at his initial captivity upon his hatching. Jason tried to soothe him, but there wasn’t much he could do to soothe the iron dragon when it came to his past. The iron dragon had experienced far more than Jason could fully understand, and there was a limit to just what he might be able to do to counter the dragon’s feelings about his initial captivity.
All he could do was ensure it didn’t happen again. By protecting the iron dragon, working with him, and helping to stop the Dragon Souls from attacking, Jason did everything that he could to offer the iron dragon what he needed.
He started to push, using the power of the ice and the iron dragons, but he met resistance. He summoned more power, but the dozen dragons loomed nearer.
He tapped on the iron dragon’s side and they streaked higher into the sky, heading up and up. As they went, he felt the others following. They trailed after them, now chasing him.
Jason continued to push, using the connection to the ice and the iron dragons, letting power flow. He used a burst of energy, a surge of power that exploded out from him, trying to overcome the resistance he detected.