Jason sent energy through the Dragon Soul dragons, combining the power of the ice and the iron dragons, sending it sweeping through them.
Jason targeted the nearest of the dragons and healed it. The dragon roared, shaking as it threw the Dragon Souls off. The bone the dragon carried dropped to the ground.
He turned, looking for the other attackers, but he didn’t see any others.
Where were the other dragons?
An illusion must’ve formed again.
Jason hurriedly began to focus on the energy of the illusion, holding onto the forest dragon’s power, letting her power fill him. As he did, he could feel the source brightly within him, the source of magic surging up through him, enough strength within it that he could use it in order to be able to withstand the next illusion, which was forming right now.
He shattered that illusion.
It wasn’t that it was difficult to fully hold on to, though he strained, pushing outward with as much force as he could, trying to ensure what he might be able to detect would overwhelm the sense of power that was there.
A burst of ice lightning came streaking down again.
It was followed by a burst from the storm dragon.
The combination of the two continued, each one streaking high from overhead, shattering the illusion, raining down upon it with a surge of power, the illusion shattering and dragons getting struck, over and over again.
Jason clung to the iron dragon’s back.
The Dragon Souls used incredible power as they blasted at him. Their magic beat upon him, their energy cascading outward, slamming into him, building up with an intensity as it hammered, one after another with a steady, rhythmic nature.
The power that flowed through him was considerable, hot and fiery, filled with his rage and anger. That rage amplified what was happening to Jason.
The iron dragon roared, power filling him, anger at the idea that something could happen to Jason, that somehow they would dare to attack him.
A burst of iron dragon magic exploded from Jason.
Regular dragons burned hot, but the iron dragon was the molten metal of a forge, burning bright and hot and blazing even brighter than anything else. As Jason pushed it away, sending it streaking outward, it slammed into the nearest of the attackers.
Heat washed outward. It burned through the dragons.
Dragons were hot and fiery, and the dragons could withstand that heat.
The Dragon Souls could not.
As he freed dragons, he could feel the way they swung the Dragon Souls free, shaking them off in a violent explosion. This was not about saving the Dragon Souls. Jason didn’t know if it was even possible to save them. At this point, the only thing Jason wanted to do was save the dragons.
Suddenly, more ice lightning streaked down from the sky, joining with the heat Jason radiated, and an enormous explosion of steam and mist and power filled him. All of that energy radiated outward, exploding into the air.
Jason could feel the other dragons better than he had before, and he pushed.
The resistance faded. Finally, the dragons were freed.
The sky filled with the rage and roaring of the dragons.
They shook the Dragon Souls free and flew off.
As the fog cleared, Jason and the iron dragon flew alone.
Somewhere distantly, he could feel the energy of the ice dragon, but though the storm dragon had helped, Jason wasn’t aware of him, not the same way as he was with the ice dragon. Eventually, he wondered if he might be able to find that connection, and he might be able to better understand the storm dragon in a way that he currently didn’t, but for now, he was thankful that he had what connection he did. That connection had saved him, if only for now.
I’d nearly failed.
That worried him.
Had I not had the help of all the misfits…
Not all, but nearly so.
They circled, continuing to fly, heading in the same direction, but there was no other sign of more dragons. There was no sign of the bones they’d been carrying.
What was Jessica doing?
The dragon continued flying, searching over the ground, and Jason clung to him. Surges of energy flooded through him, though for a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure of the source of that energy or whether there was anything within it that he was supposed to find other than what he already had. He found no evidence of Lorach being involved, but feared that it would not be long before he came across something that would implicate them.
Why had they been traveling with the dragon bones?
The ice dragon roared.
Jason frowned, connecting to him and using the dragon’s sight, and realized something. There were bones down below.
The dragon dove.
They were on the border of Lorach, with a dense, grassy plain stretching in front of him, a forest behind him.
As he approached, he continued staring through the dragon’s eyes, and recognized what he saw. Remains of a dragon.
It was a small dragon.
He jumped from the iron dragon’s back and hurried toward the remains, swishing through the grass, using power from the iron dragon to smooth down the grasses until he reached the remains.
His breath caught.
Not just any dragon, but a misfit dragon.
It was the small misfit dragon that Jessica had tried—and he had thought succeeded—to hatch. This was what Jessica had been after.
He looked back at the ice dragon. “Did you know?”
“I did not,” the dragon rumbled.
“But she had hatched it.”
He had seen her hatch it. A dragon misfit.
Which meant that she wouldn’t be able to control it nearly as well as she would have been able to control the others.
And because of that, she might not have been able to bring it back to Lorach.
He ran his hands along the dragon’s side, focusing on the power within it, and was tempted to use illusion to see what the dragon might’ve looked like, but instead, he pressed out with heat, letting the power of the iron dragon flow through him. Flames engulfed the remains of this dragon.
The hot rage and anger of the iron dragon still filled him with a sense of something familiar. And within that sense, Jason knew a different sort of purpose. It was the purpose of the dragons.
He breathed it in for a moment before letting it out.
He didn’t need to hang onto that anger. All he needed was to release it, to let it flow out and to spread away from him, heading toward the sense of the other dragons. He didn’t want to embrace the rage and anger, not wanting to be bound up in that violence. There was no point in doing so.
Letting out a deep breath, he looked over at the iron dragon, and he focused on the power from the dragon and tapped on the iron dragon’s side. They needed to find the bones—and why the dragons had been carrying them.
“It’s time for us to understand what they were after.”
4
Jason reached Dragon Haven, and he stood on the outskirts of the settlement. The city itself was massive, far more extensive than the number of people that filled it would require. There were times when he was left wondering what it might have been like when the city contained as many people as what must have filled it at its peak. How vast must Dragon Haven have been at that time?
He breathed in. The air smelled of the forest, along with the dampness of earth. Overhead the shimmering illusion held in place, protecting Dragon Haven.
The city had been protected from the very first moment that he had learned to place illusions. If it were up to Jason, he would maintain those connections and prevent Lorach from reaching him or the city.