Storm Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Whatever you did, I felt it,” William said.

  Jason continued to hold on to the sense of the illusion. He tried something different. Maybe there was something that William would be able to do too. If he were able to sense the illusion, it would be beneficial.

  Focusing on the clearing, Jason did nothing more than create an illusion of an animal crossing in front of them. It disappeared into the trees, and when it did, he turned his attention to William.

  “Did you feel anything there?”

  “What do you mean feel anything? I saw that rabbit hop through here.”

  Jason smiled. “There wasn’t a rabbit.”

  “What do you mean there wasn’t a rabbit? I saw it.”

  “You saw the illusion I created. It wasn’t a real rabbit.”

  William frowned. “Do it again.”

  Jason focused on another rabbit. He’d hunted rabbits enough times that he was familiar with the way they hopped, and as he created the illusion, he did so behind him, thinking about how a rabbit would skitter behind them and come scurrying past.

  It did so quickly, and then disappeared once more into the trees.

  “What about that time?”

  “Well, I didn’t see anything that time, but I felt the same sort of… tugging… I felt the last time.”

  If that was what he felt, then perhaps there was some way for William to be sensitized to the illusion. That could be useful.

  Jason smiled. “We need to work with that, but perhaps not now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, I think you might be able to detect when an illusion is used around you.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s all that valuable,” William said.

  “More than you’d realize. There are some in Lorach who have the ability to create a powerful illusion.” There would have to be, considering the way that Therin had quickly mastered the skill. And if they had that ability here, then Jason had to think they would find others who had a similar talent. If they did, he wanted to be ready.

  He closed his eyes, focusing on David and the blue dragon. He needed to warn him.

  He felt nothing.

  It was strange. When he’d been here after finding the jungle dragon, he’d sensed the blue dragon, but now there was nothing. Had David hidden it from him?

  They would have to keep moving. He didn’t want to linger too long.

  How long before the invisible dragon attacked?

  “We can keep working while we travel,” Jason said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know that we should go any closer with the dragon,” he said.

  He was tempted to use his own illusion to allow them to fly in, but there was a danger in doing so. There was a reason Henry had brought them here before disembarking the dragon and walking the rest of the way to Lorach.

  “I thought you could hide him.”

  “I might be able to hide him, but I don’t want to run the risk of any of the Dragon Souls knowing what I’m doing and picking up on the sense of him. If they did, and if there is any way they can pick through what I can do, the dragon could be jeopardized.”

  “So we walk?”

  “Do you have something against walking?”

  “I was getting used to riding the dragon,” he said with a smile.

  Jason shook his head. Turning to the dragon, he patted his side. “You need to have some way of warning me if something happens to you. If you need to use your connection to heat. Push it through you. I should be able to detect it in my hand.”

  “I can do that,” the dragon rumbled.

  “And if I need you, I’m going have to have some way of trying to reach to you in order to do the same thing.”

  “If I hold continuous heat, pulling it in waves, you know I’m going to need you.”

  “I will come.”

  “For now…” Jason focused on the dragon and created a gentle illusion around him, turning the massive iron dragon into a tiny cardinal.

  William gasped.

  He started forward and slammed into the side of the iron dragon. He blinked a few times before turning toward Jason. “So you can mask his presence, but you can’t really do anything else about him.”

  “It’s not real. None of it’s real. But if it works, and if it protects him, it’s a useful way of shielding power.”

  He nodded to the iron dragon, and the iron dragon rumbled.

  Turning toward the roadway, they headed out. It was dark, and he remembered what Henry had said about approaching Lorach in the dark, though he didn’t know they had much of a choice at this point. They might be able to stay camped out overnight, but if they did, he worried about what would happen to the invisible dragon. He didn’t want the dragon to reach Lorach, to begin attacking other dragons, until he had some way of trying to help him.

  Given what he knew about how fast the dragon flew, it was a wonder it wasn’t here yet. How had he managed to outrun it?

  Perhaps it had something to do with the strange conflicted nature of the dragon, but Jason worried there was something more taking place with the dragon than what he had learned.

  There might not be any way to help the dragon. It was possible that with everything that the dragon had gone through, he was beyond any help, but Jason had to believe there was something he could do.

  Neither man spoke much as they walked. William looked all around, searching around the copse of trees, and Jason stayed focused, holding onto his connection to the other dragons, and particularly to the ice dragon, thinking that if nothing else, he should be able to detect something from him about whether or not the other dragon was approaching, but there was no sense from the ice dragon. It was almost as if he had lost sight of the invisible dragon.

  Perhaps he had. The invisible dragon was powerful, and he might be able to mask himself even from the ice dragon.

  “Where do you think Sarah might’ve gone?” William asked after a while.

  “If she’s here, she would have left her dragon behind.”

  “Unless she thought she had some way of hiding her dragon.”

  “There wouldn’t have been a way of hiding her dragon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sarah is talented, but she doesn’t have the same skill with illusion,” he said.

  And without that, it was possible that she would have approached things differently. He didn’t know what it would be, but if she would’ve left her dragon behind, then they should have seen some sign of it.

  Where would she have left the dragon, though? Her experience would’ve been the same as his, and she likely would have known that she couldn’t bring the dragon with her, as doing so would only run the danger of one of the Dragon Souls finding it.

  He focused on his connection, the way he could pull on the various powers of the dragons, and wondered if he might be able to use some of that power in order to pick up on Sarah’s dragon.

  As he focused on the dragon, he didn’t detect anything.

  The same as he hadn’t detected David’s dragon.

  He looked around, gazing up at the sky, but there was no sign of any dragons. It was late enough that if any dragons were out, they would be out on their own. He doubted the Dragon Souls would be out here using the dragons to hunt. He continued to search, looking for any sign of Sarah, though he didn’t detect anything.

  He didn’t believe Sarah would come running off to try to challenge the Dragon Souls on her own. She knew that doing so would risk the dragons, and if there was anything he knew about Sarah, it was that she would do nothing to endanger the dragons. She cared far too much about them.

  And if she didn’t do that here, then where would she have gone? Why would she have left Dragon Haven? It didn’t change anything for him. He still needed to come here, if only so he could figure out some way of trying to protect the invisible dragon.

  He tested again to see if there was any sense of an illusion, but he didn’t detect anything like tha
t, either. Jason glanced over at William, but he didn’t seem to have noticed what Jason did. Perhaps that was for the best. He didn’t need William to be questioning him every time that he tried to search for illusions or place one.

  As they walked, the sounds of the night surrounded them. It was different than in the village. The sounds here were of insects chirping, the occasional animal howling, and their soft footsteps over the dry ground.

  “You seem uncomfortable,” William said.

  “I was just thinking about how different this was then everything I knew growing up.”

  “I always find it amazing you were able to survive what you did.”

  They might’ve lived in his homeland, but they didn’t do so in a way that thrived. They lived, but perhaps survived was a more apt description. As long as he had been in the village, Jason had thought himself comfortable, and he had known it as his home, but he wondered if perhaps Kayla had the right of it. Now that they were in Dragon Haven, now that he had rescued his mother, perhaps they couldn’t go back. Perhaps they didn’t need to go back.

  He closed his eyes, focusing on the sounds around him. The nighttime sounds were soothing. He was so accustomed to the sound of wind and snow whipping around that hearing something like this might be foreign to him, but it was also comforting. The sound of the wind was dangerous, and within that wind was always the threat of death. Out here, within the night, there wasn’t that same threat. There was the unknown, and Jason had no idea what he might encounter, but unknown didn’t necessarily mean bad.

  He held on to his sense of the night around him, letting that sense linger, letting it fill him. As he did, he couldn’t help but think that perhaps there could be some way to be comfortable here.

  His sister had been comfortable. She had taken to Dragon Haven in a way he hadn’t. She had understood that Dragon Haven was a place to thrive, whereas their village was never going to provide that.

  And perhaps he needed to recognize that as well.

  The farther they walked, the more that sense of inevitability began to fill him.

  It was time to focus, to be ready for what they might face, and he looked around, wondering what else they might encounter, fearing the unknown.

  When he had been here before, it had been an illusion. This time, everything that he experienced would be real, or at least so he thought. And with that, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was anything he would have to be afraid of.

  What would the city actually look like?

  He had to believe that part of the illusion was real. He couldn’t imagine that Therin would’ve been able to mask things so well that he created an entire city, and if he hadn’t, then at least Jason would have a certain familiarity with what he was going to experience.

  But what about the barracks? The Dragon Souls?

  None of that could have been real.

  Jason didn’t know, not anymore, and perhaps it didn’t matter. Everything Therin had tried to place on him had failed. Everything he’d done to Sarah had failed. And Jason had brought Therin down.

  They passed through something that tingled across his skin.

  Jason glanced over at William, but the other man didn’t seem to have noticed.

  He looked around, probing gently with his connection to the ice and iron dragon. He sent a trickle of fog outward, searching for anything he might uncover, but didn’t find anything.

  If there was something out there, it wasn’t attempting to reach him.

  But what was it?

  Jason probed with more force, sending his connection to the two dragons outward, and searched for anything that might suggest there was something dangerous, but he didn’t detect anything.

  It was just a tingling.

  Perhaps a tingling meant nothing more than a strange sensation, but perhaps it signified something more. Jason didn’t know. Because he didn’t know, he worried about it. He had to protect William now, and if something came up, he would be ready to ensure their safety.

  It was part of the reason coming here with someone else who had power and a connection to the dragons would’ve been beneficial.

  “What is it?” William asked.

  “I feel something, but I don’t know what it is,” he said.

  “One of the Dragon Souls?”

  “It might be.”

  He looked around but didn’t see anything that would suggest it was Dragon Souls. Whatever he detected was nowhere near him.

  Jason looked all around, searching for any sign of what he had detected, but there was nothing. Whatever it was remained distant and vague, but he worried about it. How could he not when he was so close to Lorach?

  As they got closer to the city, the sense of energy continued to build all around him.

  Could he draw upon that power? Pausing, he focused on the sense and drew it through him, letting it fill him.

  It rolled over him and exploded within him.

  He released it. That had been a mistake. Now whoever was out there, the Dragon Souls holding on to this energy, would know he was here.

  If it wasn’t from dragons, what was it from?

  “You keep doing something,” William said.

  “I keep trying to see if I can uncover anything about the power I detect,” he said.

  It troubled him that he couldn’t. It might be nothing more than his imagination, but when he’d pulled on its power, drawing upon it like he had with the dragon pearl, he was certain there was something to it.

  The sense of energy was there, and he drew upon it again, pulling slowly.

  The sense of power began to surge, flowing through him.

  Jason recognized that sense. It reminded him of what he felt when there was an illusion around him. This wasn’t an illusion, at least not that he could tell, but the sense of power around him reminded him of that.

  Why should that be?

  Whatever else they were doing, whatever power was being summoned around him, was tied to it. And yet, there was no illusion. There was nothing but that impression of power.

  Jason called upon that magic. He continued to pull on it. The more he pulled, the more certain he was that he was detecting something real.

  Was there someone here who knew what he was able to do? Was there someone here who knew about the forest dragon? There shouldn’t be. As far as he knew, the forest dragon had been hidden. There was another within the city who knew about the forest dragon and what it could do, but…

  That was what it was.

  Jason attempted to pull on an illusion. He tried to let it flow around him, letting it fill him, and it failed.

  William watched him.

  “What was that?”

  “That is David,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “He knows about the forest dragon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s figured out some way of protecting against an illusion.”

  It was possible that David and the other Aurans had worked together in order to place this illusion breaker. If he could find him… would David even help?

  This was his city. What Jason intended would free their dragons. It would change the Dragon Souls.

  It would save them.

  David would have to understand.

  Jason headed off along the road, William following, and neither of them spoke. Power continued to flow around him, a pervasive sense that Jason thought he could draw upon as he had before.

  Maybe that had been a mistake. By drawing upon that power, had he alerted the Aurans of his presence? He didn’t even know that it mattered. The only Auran he cared about finding him would be David.

  Jason now moved through a field, staying as quiet as he could. The field began to change, becoming something else, rolling into a vast expanse of nothingness. Far in the distance, a city rose up out of the darkness.

  It reminded him of what he had seen when he had been here before, but there was something about it that was somewhat different. The more he looked, the more certain he w
as it was not quite the same, but similar enough that he thought it would appear as it had when he had been here before.

  Eventually, they reached a road leading toward the city. Even this was the same as what he had seen in his vision. And he couldn’t help but think that even though all of this had been part of the illusion that one time, he’d seen something real. He had no idea what was real and what was not, but he was determined to experience this for the first time, or for the second, whichever it happened to be.

  “Why are you going so fast?” William asked.

  “I think I revealed my presence to them.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a sense of energy around us, and I made the mistake of trying to pull upon it. I thought that…” Jason shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter what I thought. All that matters is that I used that power, thinking it would reveal the presence of whoever was out there. I think it’s a protective barrier.”

  “Why would they need a protective barrier?”

  “I think the protective barrier is to prevent someone like myself—or Therin—from creating an illusion that would influence anyone else in the city.”

  “But didn’t you come here affected by an illusion?”

  “I did, and I don’t know if this barrier was placed after that, but when I came, I wasn’t really here.”

  The buildings in the city were different than even those in Dragon Haven. Whereas in Dragon Haven, they were rounded, with contours that seemed to blend into the forest, these were tall and with massive spires and an overwhelming sense of energy radiating off them. He was fixated on them, staring at the buildings. As he looked around, he could feel that energy. He thought he could use it, but he also thought he shouldn’t use it.

  Had that power been here before?

  Then again, he hadn’t actually reached the city. If he had, he might have known about that power. Now that he was here, now that he was standing in front of Lorach, he couldn’t help but think he hadn’t even been anywhere near it before.