I hurried out to the dragon pens first thing in the morning, not wanting to miss Thomas again. I had promised Joran that we could meet again, but I couldn’t keep missing my training, and so I committed myself to working as much as I could. Besides, if I managed to demonstrate significant skill with Thomas, or with one of the other instructors, I might even be able to show Joran and impress him.
Darkness surrounded me, though this time I wasn’t beholden to it. I summoned the energy from the dragon, letting it course through me, and as I tamped it down, I felt it build—until I could finally release it, pouring it out from one finger to the next, feeling it stretching between me. The flames built, and I recognized the power that was there, the energy that filled in between my fingers, the power that coursed from the green dragon to me.
Despite the darkness, I could see the outline of the forest just beyond the dragon pens. The wind gusted, carrying a soft rustling through the trees and a shaking of the leaves, giving me a hint of the energy that came from the forest itself—more than what I had noticed before. It was there, real and unsettling.
But did it need to be?
I could call upon the flames now.
It gave me the ability to understand that I was no longer helpless here.
Strange to think that I had ever been helpless, but coming to the Academy had given me that feeling, making me aware of my deficiencies in a way that I had never anticipated. When I had been in my homeland, on the farms, I had never thought that I had any real deficiency. I had been a farmer. I had needed to be practical, but I had also known that I had nothing to fear. Now, since coming here, I no longer knew if that were true.
“You continue to progress,” Thomas said, approaching from the darkness.
I lowered my hands, pushing away the connection to the green dragon, trying to separate it from myself. I didn’t want to sever it altogether, wanting to maintain some semblance of that connection so that I could hold on to it, but I didn’t want to hold too tightly to it, either.
“I worked with it the last few days.”
“Again, you have proven yourself an interesting student,” he said.
“I was trying,” I said.
He nodded to me. “Show me.”
I focused on the power flowing through me, the energy that rolled up through the connection shared with the green dragon, letting that power swirl. In doing so, I tamped it down, finding that the more I suppressed the power deeper into me, the easier it was for me to feel it building into something I had to release. It was a strange thing to be aware of, though the more I did it, the easier it became to have some control over.
When I did, I found I didn’t need to tamp it all the way down to create a thin band of power, which took the form of flames. For me to have a wider band of flame, I had to tamp even more down into myself, as if the more power I stored translated to a greater connection.
“Interesting,” Thomas said, watching me. The light from the flames allowed me to see his face, though there no emotion on it that told me how he was feeling.
“I don’t know what else I can do with it though,” I said.
Thomas smiled. “Then you lack creativity.”
“I’m just trying to hold on to control.”
Thomas nodded. “Control is the first thing you must master, but once you master that, then you can find other ways of using that power. Such as this.”
He held his hands up, and flames began to trickle out from his fingertips, spiraling around his forearms and up to his shoulders before fading once more. When the power dissipated altogether, it did so with a slight burst. I noticed how he shifted to a different dragon, as if doing so would grant him a different sort of power.
“Do you see what I did?”
“You forced it along yourself, expanding the connection you have.”
“Very good. Everything is a cycle of power when it comes to the dragons. In your case, what I need for you to do is to figure out how to change that cycle. Right now, you are cycling it through you, whether or not you’re turning it into flames, and then back to the dragon. The more that you shift that cycle, the more control you have over that power. You can increase your connection to the dragon as you do.”
I tried to do what he said, changing how that power cycled through me, sending a coursing up my arms, but I had a difficult time doing so. I needed to have fine control over it. Not all the blast of power that I had almost released yesterday. This was going to involve something much different.
I took a deep breath, steadying myself, holding on to that power and letting it flow out from me. In doing so, I could feel it working down my arms, stretching away, and then shifting as it jumped from one arm onto the next.
“Better,” Thomas said.
I looked over to him. “What can I use this for?”
“You aren’t to the point where you need to worry about how you use it. At this point, it’s still a matter of trying to gain control over it. The more you master that control, the more you will find that you can use it.”
He turned his attention to the dragon pen, approaching the bars and grabbing them. Flames crackled along his fingers, heading up one bar and down another. I understood the purpose behind it now. I could see how that energy was flowing, the way the fire crackled from one side to the next. In doing so, it maintained a cycle. That seemed to be the key when working with the dragon power.
Would it always be necessary?
He breathed out. “I suppose given how quickly you have progressed, I can show you something more,” he said.
“What would you show me?”
“Come with me.”
He released the bars and headed along the dragon pen, making his way to its backside. I followed, and he stopped at a point near the midsection of the dragon pen where the bars were worked into a small doorway. I had seen the doorway several times before, but I had never gone through it. He pulled open the door, barely hesitating as he did, and stepped inside. The connection that he’d been holding dissipated, leaving him standing there disconnected to power. I watched him, debating what I was going to do before I followed him. Thomas had taught me. Regardless of anything else, he was the first person who had helped me connect to this power in a real and meaningful way.
“What are we doing in here?” I asked.
“We are going to have a different connection to the dragons,” he said, grinning at me. “I think it would be beneficial for you to have the experience you wanted.”
“Which is?”
He smiled. “Didn’t you say you wanted to know what it was like to ride on one of the dragons?”
He rested his hand on a nearby dragon. Heat glowed from Thomas, leaving him radiating a faint warmth.
“I did, but . . .”
He chuckled. “We won’t be going far. I’m not so sure we should, considering the circumstances.”
“You mean the missing dragons,” I said. There was more than just the missing dragons. I worried about the Djarn, as well, though I didn’t want to tell Thomas that.
He nodded slowly. “I suppose they have spoken about that within the Academy.”
“Not much. I’ve overheard conversations, so I know something’s going on, though I have a feeling the instructors don’t want to talk about it. One of the other students said something to Donathar about it.”
“I doubt he’s going to do much unless it serves his own purposes.”
I glanced over to Thomas, frowning. “You don’t care for him?”
“He is a skilled dragon mage.” He said that as if it were all that mattered. “Don’t concern yourself with the missing dragons. The more one knows about them, the easier it is to be accused of having a hand in their absence.”
He mounted the dragon’s back. I marveled at the fact that the dragon seemed to simply allow it, leaving his head down, letting Thomas climb onto him.
“Come along,” Thomas said. “This is not my usual dragon, but this one has no difficulty carrying two riders.”<
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I approached slowly, carefully, and stepped up to the dragon. There didn’t seem to be any easy way to climb onto his back. He had scales along the side, and two massive spikes protruding from his enormous head. Thomas sat positioned in a way that allowed him to reach for those spikes. What would I hold on to when I climbed on?
Thomas waited for me.
I climbed up onto the dragon’s back. Heat radiated from the dragon’s scaled sides, and I could feel the energy coursing out of him. I plopped down behind Thomas, and had barely begun to get settled when the dragon launched himself into the sky.
It was violent. Abrupt. The air whipped at me, threatening to toss me off if the dragon didn’t do it first.
We took to the air, massive wings spreading and catching the wind. I grabbed for the dragon and found myself gripping two of his scales as I attempted to hold on, clinging to him with everything that I had. Power coursed up from deep within the dragon, and I strained to maintain my seat.
“What do you think?” Thomas asked, glancing back. He sat casually and almost comfortably. As the dragon took to the sky, Thomas leaned slightly forward, though there was a hint of tension within him. Maybe he wasn’t nearly as comfortable as he appeared.
“It isn’t what I expected,” I yelled, trying to keep my voice above the roar of the wind that swirled off of the dragon with every pump of his massive wings. The heat radiating upward kept me comfortable at least, though I didn’t know if that would shift over time.
“Just wait,” Thomas said.
The dragon suddenly banked, and I squeezed the scales to hold on to his back as we tilted. We streaked above the forest.
We weren’t even that high—just high enough so that I could look down off of the dragon’s back and into the forest. I was reminded of when I’d chased the black dragon after Jerith had brought me there, finding the Djarn instead.
I scanned the forest, looking for any sign of the Djarn. Considering how difficult it was to see them from the ground, I didn’t expect to have it any easier looking at them from above. There was nothing but an undulating forest. In the darkness, it was difficult to make anything out. Perhaps it would have been different if we had gone in the daylight.
The dragon moved quickly, sweeping above the forest top, heading west.
“We’re going toward Berestal,” I said softly.
Thomas glanced back at me. “Are we?”
I frowned, looking off and trying to squint into the distance, but I couldn’t make anything out. “At least, it would be in this direction,” I said. “Whether we’re actually going that far is a different matter.”
“If we were to travel for much of the morning, we would probably reach Berestal eventually. Even by dragon, it is a considerable distance.”
I shifted.
“What are you looking for, then?”
“You have proven that you have a way of feeling for the connection to the dragons.” Thomas looked back at me, practically twisting off to the side so that he could stare at me. “I would like you to use that technique now.”
“For what?”
“For the reason you have mentioned. We’ve lost several of our dragons. It is unusual for the king to have them go missing from within the city. I thought we would look.”
That surprised me. What he left unsaid was that it wouldn’t be nearly as unusual for them to go missing outside of the city. “Do you think it’s the Vard or . . .”
“It wouldn’t be the first time that the Vard have tried to acquire a dragon, would it? You’ve seen that yourself. But there are others interested in the king’s dragons.”
I nodded. “I didn’t think the Vard had anybody capable of using dragon magic.”
“That’s the belief. Those of us who’ve dealt with them have tried to convince the king otherwise. There are several of us who believe that some of the Vard are equipped to use that power. It’s just a matter of revealing them. So far, the Vard have not done so.”
He turned back, sitting upright, and though I could feel his connection to the dragon, I could feel something more. He was testing for something else that was out there.
It came to me as a faint fluttering of power, then became a surge of energy that stretched away from him, pressing out before circling back around. He was testing for a dragon connection. He was testing for anything that would suggest that there were dragons out there.
“You think they would be in the forest?”
“I’m hopeful they would be. If they aren’t, it means something more.”
“What exactly does it mean?”
“It means there would be others drawing them.”
He said nothing else, and I leaned off the side of the dragon, focusing on the energy. I could feel the power of the dragon, though I didn’t attempt to connect to it. I wasn’t sure if I even could. I wondered if the dragon could tolerate more than one dragon mage connecting to him at once, considering Thomas had already done so. I didn’t know if there were limits.
I focused on what I might be able to detect below me. Distantly, I could feel the dragons back in the city, the same way I had when I’d wandered through the forest. Could I connect to the green dragon from here?
When I was within the Academy, near the dragon pen, I could feel it easily, but it didn’t seem possible to stretch across such a distance. I did what Thomas asked, trying to see if there were anything down in the forest floor that I might detect. After a while, I noticed something. A hint of power down below.
“I feel something,” I said.
Thomas glanced back at me. “Where?”
I pointed. It was off to our right, and the dragon suddenly turned, leaving me wondering how Thomas communicated with the dragon to indicate where to go. The treetops were nothing more than a dark blur.
“Do you feel anything?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Thomas said.
I focused, straining to feel whether there was anything out there that would change for me. There might be a hint of power down there, but it had disappeared.
“I lost it,” I said.
We began to circle. I closed my eyes, thinking about the dragon energy, but once again, didn’t feel anything.
We veered off.
I looked down at the darkened ground, continuing to search for a connection to the dragons. After a while, I felt another surge of pressure. It was behind us.
“There,” I said, pointing back the way that we had just flown.
The dragon turned, switching directions quickly, and this time he streaked rapidly back in the way that we had come. Then I felt it.
“It’s still there,” I said.
“Where?”
I pointed directly down.
We circled, then the dragon suddenly dived toward the ground.
I tried to hold tightly to the dragon’s scales, clutching them, worried that if I were to let go, I would fall. The wind whipped around me, threatening to throw me off of the dragon’s back, but somehow I managed to hold myself in place.
We hit the treetops.
As soon as we did, the dragon let out a soft roar and heat exploded from him.
Strangely, there came a reverberation of heat and energy that seemed to answer him. We crashed, landing on the ground.
Thomas jumped from the dragon’s back, flames stretching from his hands, spreading out across the forest floor. They didn’t burn anything.
“Come with me,” he snapped.
I climbed down, following him. I could feel the connection he shared with the dragon, the way it swooped out from him, cycling through him before returning to the dragon.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“What you detected.”
“I don’t know what it was.”
“But it was something,” Thomas stated, looking back at me.
I could still feel it out there, though I wasn’t at all sure what it was—but it was faint and fading, becoming increasingly difficult for me to detect anything.
“There’s something, but I don’t know what it is,” I said.
“Then we follow.”
Thomas seemed to think it was important enough for us to track it through the forest. In the darkness, it was difficult for me to make anything out. I could feel the occasional sense of power fluttering against me, a surge of energy that suggested there was something out there.
“Do you feel anything?” I asked Thomas as we raced ahead. He seemed to have some way of navigating through the forest much more easily than I did, slipping between the trees, a pale light glowing from him. It took me a moment to realize that he used his connection to the dragons to illuminate the path ahead of us.
“I don’t detect what you did, though I suspect there’s something there,” Thomas said.
I continued to hold on to the connection to power to feel for something. What if I connected to the green dragon and used that to probe for something else?
I tried to reach across the distance, to use what I could feel of the green dragon. The sense of it was faint, but the dragon was there. For a moment, I wondered if I had ever separated that connection to the dragon. Strangely, I could feel it in the heat deep within me, without having to do much more to connect to the dragon itself.
I held on to that energy and realized there was something more fluttering from me, flowing outward. It drifted into the forest, probing at what I detected.
Thomas glanced back at me. “What did you do?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t do anything. I just—”
There came a strange crack.
I jerked, spinning, and froze. A face in the darkness caught my attention. One of the Djarn. Thomas was there quickly, wrapping power through him, and he sent it streaking toward the Djarn.
“Don’t,” I said, grabbing for him.
Thomas pushed me back. “Be careful,” he said. “They can be dangerous. They’ve been moving toward the capital.”
I frowned. “You think the Djarn are responsible for the dragons?” Thomas didn’t say anything. The face I saw wanted us to know that it was there. I was certain of it. “If there’s one of the Djarn, then there are likely others. The fact that we have seen this one tells me there are probably more in the trees around us.”
The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) Page 11