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

by D. K. Holmberg

  He sat up.

  With the pain easing off, he was able to move.

  Getting to his feet, he felt wobbly and unsteady. He staggered toward the back of the cell, leaning against it. There was a sense of power around him. He suspected that one of the Dragon Souls—and possibly Jessica—was nearby, but he didn’t see them.

  The fact that he didn’t see them troubled him, and he worried that if they attacked, he wouldn’t be ready. He needed to be ready.

  He rested, the sense of the dragons around him, the power filling him, but he was exhausted. There was no movement.

  Jason kept waiting for someone or something to come, but there came no signs of movement, no signs of anyone coming to attack. He sagged back down to his knees.

  He rested against the wall, looking around, pressure building.

  His eyelids grew heavy and he struggled to keep them open.

  Jason couldn’t fall asleep, not now. Not with the threat of the attack so close.

  As his eyes continued to grow heavy, as he continued to feel the pressure around him, he struggled to stay awake, to let himself feel the sense of power, to draw upon the dragons. Yet when he tried to access the power of the dragons he was connected to, it was almost as if everything had faded, as if whatever he had gone through had changed his ability to connect to them.

  Panic set in. Jason scrambled forward, trying to draw upon the power of the iron dragon and the ice dragon and the forest dragon, searching for some way he could call upon their strength, upon the connection to them.

  Jason trembled, leaning back and focusing on the sense of the dragons, searching for something—anything that could help him find a way to reconnect to the dragons.

  After all the time he’d spent fearing the dragons, now that he had gained an awareness of them and a connection to them, he wanted nothing more than to maintain it. He didn’t want to lose what he’d gained. Sadness overcame him and the despair he’d been fighting to stave off crept in. He crumbled to the ground.

  When he rested, there were no more dreams of dragons.

  15

  When Jason came around, it was to the sound of hissing working toward him as Jessica approached. It took a moment for him to realize where he was and what was going on. When he did, he sat up, scooting to the back of the cell. He glanced down, but saw no change to the iron dragon glove.

  That could be nothing more than the illusion, but the more he thought about it, the more he remembered and the less likely he believed that was. Whatever had happened to him was tied to something that had occurred while he was unconscious. It had stripped his connection from the dragons, and now he couldn’t help but think whatever he’d seen was real. This wasn’t an illusion. This had actually happened.

  He cowered, wrapping his arms around his knees, and he stared straight ahead.

  When a face appeared in front of him, he didn’t even look up.

  “Have you decided to speak to me?”

  Jason didn’t move. He didn’t want to give Jessica that satisfaction, but he could feel the heat radiating off her. Whatever she had done by stripping some of his connection from him, he still could feel the energy.

  “You seem different,” she said.

  He glanced up then. He half expected her to gloat, but there was nothing of that sort on her face. Instead, it was as if she were trying to decipher a puzzle, and she tipped her head to the side, her brow furrowed and her mouth pressed into a thin line. She clasped her arms over her chest, watching him.

  “Has captivity changed so much for you so quickly?”

  Jason was tempted to shout at her, to cry out, to rail at her for what she had done to him, but what was he going to say? Anything he might say would only reinforce that she had been successful. He had the hope that whatever she’d done was only temporary, and yet the more that he thought about it, the harder it was to know whether or not it was. If it was not, then he needed to get free of this cell in order to find the dragons, to reach that connection again. He had to believe he could reconnect to them.

  “I don’t have any answers for you,” he said.

  “You have answers. The clothing you wear tells me that. I thought my brother might come to you, but he hasn’t been seen here.”

  “I don’t know your brother.”

  “You keep saying that, but I disagree. Do you know that he was gone from the city for a time? He claims he was out searching for dragons, and considering how he has done that often enough, it is certainly believable, but I know my brother. When he returned wearing furs, I couldn’t help but think something happened to him.”

  Jason fought to keep his face neutral. It was difficult to do.

  “You are different.”

  Heat began to build from her, and rather than slamming into him, it washed over him.

  Jason braced himself, afraid of what might happen, but there was nothing more than just a sense of heat. As it rolled through him, he ignored it, and decided he couldn’t fight it. There was no point in doing so. Whatever she was attempting to do to him would change him, and though it might, she had already changed him. She had separated him from the dragons, and that had made things worse for him.

  She stepped back. “What is this?”

  Jason looked down. “What is what?”

  “This. What is this?”

  She backed away from the bars of the cell, and heat built from her. As it did, it pressed up against the bars of the cell, but it didn’t work its way in. It seemed to Jason that she was afraid of pushing the power into the cell, almost as if she were trying to avoid doing so.

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “What is this?” she asked again.

  Jason got to his feet, staring at her. When he did, he took a deep breath, focusing on the heat she was calling.

  An idea came to him, and it was one that he should have thought about before, but for whatever reason, he’d ignored it. She had a dragon pearl, and he had felt the power of the dragons all around him. Because of that, he had thought he was trapped.

  What if that wasn’t the case at all? He could use what he could detect and he could draw upon that power. He might be able to draw upon her dragon pearl.

  She watched him, and if he didn’t know better, he would’ve said there was fear on her face. Why would she be afraid of him?

  Something had changed. She was convinced he had changed, and then she had probed him, using whatever tied the dragon pearls to her dragons, and when she had done that, she had become alarmed.

  Why, though?

  Jason didn’t know, but she seemed to think he was something to fear.

  Could she know he was able to call upon the power of her dragon pearls—and with as much power as he detected, it would have to be more than one?

  If she did, he wasn’t going to disappoint her.

  He focused on that power, drawing it from her.

  For a moment, nothing happened, and then he continued to pull, drawing on the power, letting it fill him. With increasing intensity, he pulled more power.

  Something about him seemed different.

  Perhaps that was what she detected. Perhaps she could feel that change, and that was what she feared. What had she done by separating him from the dragons?

  Maybe she had connected him to the dragons here. He doubted she would have done so intentionally, but it could have been accidental. He continued to draw that energy through him, to pull upon the power of the dragon pearls she was holding, but there was something more.

  There was energy within the city.

  He recognized it. He had felt it when he had first come to Lorach. He could use it. He could draw upon it. He wrapped the power around her, squeezing her toward the bars of his cell.

  “Release me.”

  Her jaw clenched and she fought. Power pushed away from him, and whatever she was doing was incredibly skilled. He could feel the way that she was trying to separate his connection to the dragon pearl, the way that she teased it
apart, tearing it free.

  This was the kind of person who would have been able to separate him from the other dragons. He had little doubt about that. He was thankful he’d not faced her before now. With Therin, there had been a brutality, but there was no skill, not like this. Her way of drawing off his power was incredible, but he could keep working. He needed to try to draw as much as he could. If he could, he might be able to get to freedom.

  He tore at the way she tried to separate him from the dragon pearl power. With more force, he let it fill him. Jason squeezed her up against the bars of the cell.

  “Release me,” he demanded.

  She ignored him, and as she did, he sensed some twisted nature of her power. She freed herself from what he had done and staggered back.

  Jason tried to wrap her in power again, thinking about the way Therin had bound him in bands of power, and attempted to squeeze her up against the bars, but she sliced through it, staggering away. She raced off down the hall, leaving Jason trying to grab her again, attempting to pull her back.

  She was gone.

  He wasn’t helpless. Now that he was connected to this power, he wondered if he might be able to use it. He slammed that energy into the walls nearby.

  It did nothing.

  What about the other wall?

  He shifted the nature of the power and blasted it there. Much like before, there was no change. What about the cell itself?

  He sent the energy surging underneath the bars, thinking about he needed in order to free himself, and he could feel a tingling, almost as if he were digging beneath the bars.

  There had to be some other way that he could work, but he wasn’t able to lift the bars again. He staggered back to the far wall. Even though he had access to this power, and even though he could let it fill him, he still wasn’t able to get to freedom.

  Jason let out a trickle of power, looking around.

  He had the power within him, and thankfully, the connection to dragons in general wasn’t lost. It was just the connections he’d brought into the cell with him that had been severed. There had to be some way to pull upon what he had left.

  He focused, drawing on more and more power. As it filled him, he had an awareness of something else.

  He could feel what Jessica had been alarmed by.

  Something within him had changed.

  Jason focused internally, twisting the nature of the power. He had to figure out what had altered within him. There were traces that were familiar.

  It was the dragons.

  The dragons were mixed, mingled, almost as if they were merged together.

  And all that sense flowed through him.

  The dragons were still there. Whatever had happened to him hadn’t separated him entirely. It might have changed things. It might have made it so he had less of a connection than he had before, but even that wasn’t a certainty. It was possible that whatever had happened to him had not weakened the connection, but strengthened it.

  What if he had actually grown stronger with the dragons?

  Now he had to figure out what would be involved in using it.

  Here he thought he’d lost it, that she had used something against him. Instead, that power was there, along with the energy of Lorach that seemed to fill him. If it was mingled, then he couldn’t use one at a time as he had tried. He had to reach for each of the dragons at once.

  He gasped as the sense of power flooded into him from each of the dragons.

  It was almost as if the ice dragon were there with him, almost as if the iron dragon were there with him, and the forest dragon too.

  An illusion.

  That was all it was. He was certain of that, but did it even matter?

  All that mattered was that he had that connection and that he was able to draw upon it. It didn’t matter that it was an illusion. He continued to hold on to that power, focusing on it, letting it fill him.

  And he waited.

  Slowly, the energy from the dragons began to build, rolling through him.

  Jason called it through him and stood facing the bars of the cell.

  He pushed outward.

  The effect was surprising. The bars didn’t shatter, not as he had hoped, but instead, they twisted, opening, ringed with heat and cold that wafted toward him and yet warped by the illusion.

  Jason had no idea of whether that was real or not, but if the forest dragon were allowing him to manifest an illusion in such a way that it would free him, did it matter?

  The forest dragon had said something to him once that seemed apt now. The nature of the illusion was only within his mind, but was also powerful enough that it could change what people saw and believed.

  He believed that was true.

  After he stepped forward through the cell, he stood in the hallway.

  He remained filled with the power of the dragons, letting it flow through him. With that power rolling over him, he was certain he could continue to call to it, to draw it through him. What did it mean that he drew on so much power? Would he be depleting the dragons?

  The iron dragon was nearby, and Jason wanted to allow him enough time and protection to be safe. It wasn’t just the iron dragon he worried about. He worried about the forest dragon and the ice dragon as he continued to search for the invisible dragon.

  “Storm dragon,” a voice said, filling his mind.

  It came from the ice dragon.

  The connection was there, almost as if he were with the ice dragon.

  “Storm dragon?” He spoke aloud, but wondered if he even needed to.

  “Watch,” the ice dragon said.

  An image filled his mind. Within it, he saw a darkened sky. A dragon flew in front of him, though he could barely make out its form. It seemed almost as if the dragon were made of clouds, billowing within them, and thunder rumbled around the dragon. Lightning streaked down and the wind whipped, whistling around, catching the ice dragon.

  With each rumble of thunder, there came an echoing from within the dragon. It was a sense of power, and it was enormous. Jason could feel the way the other dragon was calling to power.

  Storm dragon.

  He understood, and yet he wondered how Therin had created a storm dragon.

  With the other misfits, he had placed them into different environments, thinking that by doing so, they would be tied to the environment. As many mistakes as Therin had made, that was one experiment that had worked out for him. He had been right about the nature of that power and had created a connection to the dragons that hadn’t been there before.

  How would there have been a connection to storms? He didn’t understand how such a thing was even possible, but as he looked through the ice dragon’s eyes, he couldn’t help but understand that was exactly what he was seeing.

  More power filled him and he focused, thinking about the nature of it. To reach the storm dragon, it was going to take an understanding of the dragon. As he looked at him, he couldn’t help but think he didn’t fully understand what his nature was or how he was going to reach him.

  Not only that, he was going to need to find a way to help him.

  There had to be something he could do, but as he looked through the ice dragon’s eyes, he was uncertain. How could he help a dragon like that? He had to find understanding, but he didn’t know if he could understand a creature like that.

  “Has he harmed other dragons?”

  “There have been several attacks,” the ice dragon said.

  “What have you done?”

  In his mind, it seemed almost as if the ice dragon rumbled, a sense of frustration filling him. Because of what had changed, it was almost as if Jason were there, right by the ice dragon, and could practically feel the connection to him.

  “There is nothing that can be done,” the ice dragon said.

  “You have to do something,” he said.

  The ice dragon rumbled again. “I have tried, but any time I intervene, there is greater danger.”

  Jason let out a
surge of frustration, and it mingled with that of the ice dragon. The two of them shared in that frustration, shared the experience, and they both shared in the anger of what had happened to the storm dragon. All he could do was try to work with the other dragon, to help him. For now, he thought he couldn’t do anything but escape.

  He’d managed to get out of the cell by warping reality, by warping the bars, but what else would it take to get to freedom?

  Would it involve fighting?

  He would have to find what had happened to William. And he still didn’t know what had become of Sarah. She was here, he was certain of it, and he would have to do something to help break her free as well.

  But more than that, he needed to do whatever it would take to help the dragons. That seemed to be the most pivotal thing.

  First, he had to get out.

  He strode the length of the hallway. As he went, it seemed as if he were in many places at once. With one step, he saw the same thing the ice dragon saw. With another step, it seemed as if he were in the forest, the vision of the forest dragon flickering past him. With another step, it was almost as if he were outside with the iron dragon.

  The sense of it all flowed through him, though he had no understanding of what it meant or how he possessed it.

  He reached the door at the end of the hallway and pried it open. Only after he opened it did he realize that there was something strange about the fact that he was able to pull it open. Stairs stretched up in front of him.

  Lanterns were set along the narrow walls and he closed his eyes, focusing on what he could see ahead of him. It was possible he would encounter Dragon Souls. If he did, they might have enough strength in numbers that he would be overwhelmed and end up back where he had been. Or someplace worse.

  When he headed up the stairs, he could hear his boots echoing off the stone. He tried to silence them, thinking of the way he had seen Therin do the same thing when he had first worked with the man, the way he’d practically floated. He drew upon the power all around him, that of the dragons within him, and the power within the city.