As he went, he couldn’t help but feel as if all of this were strangely impossible. Why was he able to do any of this? And perhaps it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was doing it.
He held on to his power, focusing on it, letting that sense of it fill him before pushing it out from him. He used it to detect whether there were Dragon Souls in front of him, but didn’t discover anyone. Thankfully, he was alone, but for how much longer?
He needed to get free of the prison, but didn’t know if his friends were even here.
What he really wanted was to find David.
He had questions, and given what he had seen from Jessica, he thought he needed to better understand the relationship between the two. He needed to know whether David had been responsible for anything that had happened.
Jason hurried up the steps.
When he did, he focused on all of the power around him and thought about what he had detected when he had first come to the city. There hadn’t been a sense of David and his connection to the dragon. Could he find him now?
Jason needed to use that. If nothing else, having someone like David, someone interested in helping the dragons, was beneficial. As he searched for where he could find David, he discovered his presence. He was somewhere in the same tower Jason was in right now.
It wasn’t as much that Jason could feel him, but the dragon pearl he carried.
Dragons had a distinct sense to each of them, and the dragon David had connected to was distinct enough that he could identify it. He focused on it, tying himself to that dragon, and let himself be drawn toward it. He went up the stairs, and rather than taking a doorway where he could have stepped out, he continued up and up. The stairs widened after a while, and with each spiral, they seemed to widen even more. Several doorways let into the stairs, but so far, he hadn’t encountered anyone. He worried a time would come when he would encounter others. If that happened, he didn’t know what he was going to do, but he was determined to try to find David, if only so he could have his questions answered.
When he focused on the sense of the dragon, he could feel it. It was there, calling to him. The farther he went, the more certain he was that he neared it. Jason hurried forward, toward that dragon pearl.
And then he felt it move.
It was near him. He hurried up the stairs, and when he reached the doorway, he tested the door. It was unlocked. Pushing it open, he frowned at what he saw.
There had to be a dozen Dragon Souls in the hallway. All of them surrounded David, all were holding on to power, and each of them seemed to be throwing power elsewhere. Jason stood transfixed, unable to figure out what was taking place.
He felt surge of power flung toward David and then repelled, the way the power was being thrown around by the various Dragon Souls, but he didn’t have any idea what was taking place. Or why. Why would they attack here?
For a moment, he focused, listening to that power. As he did, he thought that he understood. It was tied to David. This was an attack on David.
Which meant Jessica attacked here.
This wasn’t his fight. Jason didn’t need to be involved, but he thought he had to help. If David were under attack, he needed to do whatever he could to offer some assistance, mostly because he needed to find out what David knew and see if there was anything that he might be able to uncover about the nature of the power around the city.
Jason watched to figure out which of the dragon pearls were helping David, but the more he stared, the more certain he was that none of them were trying to help David. All the power coming from the dragon pearls seemed to be attacking him.
Someone turned toward him. A burst of power streaked toward him and Jason ducked, lowering his head to avoid the surge of power, but there came another blast, and then another.
The powers continued to slam all around him and Jason ignored them, straining to try to draw upon the power of the city, but that wasn’t going to be enough.
He had to try a different approach.
That involved drawing on the power of the dragons within him.
He would reveal his connection.
At this point, all that mattered was to get to David. He could help find his friends. He would help save the dragons of Lorach from the storm dragon.
If he revealed himself, then so be it. If it came down to that, Jason was determined to offer David whatever help he could so that he could ensure that he had the answers he needed.
Focusing on his power, focusing on what he could summon, he let it fill him. There came the power of the ice and iron dragons. There came that of the forest dragon.
It all filled him. He turned to the nearest of the Dragon Souls and slammed a surge of heat into the man. It sent him staggering back and he crashed into the wall. Jason pressed him there, holding until he could move past. Then he headed to the next Dragon Soul and, much like the last one, sent a rush of power slamming into him. He walked through the line of Dragon Souls, hammering at them, using blast of power after blast of power, one after another, and got closer and closer to where he sensed David.
The Dragon Souls seemed to realize he was more of a threat, and they turned their attention to him. Power battered him.
With his newfound connection to the dragons, he was able to draw upon a different source of energy, and he twisted it around, pushing it outward. It created a barricade that allowed him to protect himself.
He needed to find a way to stop the fighting.
He thought about the different powers he could access. The one that struck him as most useful here would be illusion. If he could trap these Dragon Souls within an illusion, he might be able to overwhelm them, and he had to believe he could keep them from fighting.
He didn’t want to harm them. All he wanted was to stop them.
The forest dragon’s energy worked through him, the familiarity of it rolling over him. He could use it. He had to use it.
And then he shifted the nature of reality.
It involved drawing upon the forest dragon, letting her sense of power flow into him, and he turned the hallway into a vast expanse of snow. Wind whipped, and the snowpack crunched beneath his feet. He let the swirling snow mask everything else around him. Power picked up, the intensity of the wind slamming into the Dragon Souls, sending them sliding away.
None of this was real, but it was real enough for them. That was what mattered. It filled their minds. They believed they were suddenly in the north. Reality changed for them.
None of them were able to push against what he was doing. They were more focused on trying to get free. Jason held on to the illusion, wanting to maintain everything he could in order to get himself to David.
Jason pressed outward, using the wind to guide him, and he found David.
He was standing out in the open. A puzzled frown crossed his face, and when Jason approached, he watched him, an uncertain expression on his face. “This was you?”
Jason nodded, standing in the middle of the storm, ignoring it. He knew it wasn’t real. “I met your sister.”
David pulled his clothes tight around him, though he didn’t meet Jason’s gaze. “I suspected as much.”
“Did you know I was here?”
Jason looked past him, and there was no sense of anyone else here, but there was power battering on his illusion. Eventually, the illusion would fade.
“I knew someone was here; didn’t know that it was you. When last we spoke, you didn’t have enough control over illusion to do this.”
Jason brushed off the question buried in the comment. “I need your help.”
“I can’t help you. If you learned anything from my sister, then you know that my position here is not quite what you believe.”
“You’re an Auran, are you not?”
“I’m an Auran. But I’m also something more.”
“The prince.”
He nodded. “Second in line to the throne.”
“Let me guess. Your sister is next in line?”
> David nodded. “She is, and she doesn’t care for my approach with the dragons.”
“I gathered that. There’s something taking place. I’m going to need your help to protect your dragons.”
David raised his hand, and a burst of heat exploded from him. Jason turned and saw one of the Dragon Souls approaching, but he was thrown back by David’s blast of heat. Jason focused on the illusion, trapping the other man inside it, hoping that it would hold him.
Already the illusion was beginning to fade, and he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to maintain it. He continued to hold out, squeezing onto that power, focusing on everything he could. The illusion needed to last long enough to get answers from David.
“Why would you want to help the dragons?”
“We might disagree about many things, but we don’t disagree on the fact that the dragons are powerful creatures. I’ve seen it from you. You wouldn’t have trained your dragon the way that you did if you didn’t believe that.”
David looked past him, and again he raised his hand. Jason spun, and he saw three Dragon Souls staggering through the snow toward them.
He held out his hand and sent a blast of ice and heat at them, and he twisted the nature of the illusion. Some aspect of the illusion mixed with the power of the other dragons and pressed them back, and they went flying toward the far wall.
“What’s the issue?”
“I found another dragon like the other three. I don’t know what your Dragon Souls will call him, but the ice dragon refers to him as the storm dragon.”
“Storm dragon?” David frowned, biting his lip. “We learned there was something of incredible power. It attacked dragons. We’ve been struggling against it, trying to do whatever we could to protect the dragons, but my sister would see it captured and trained whereas others of us would like to do nothing more than eliminate the threat.”
“Your sister might be right.”
“You think it should be captured and trained?”
“I don’t think it should be captured, but the dragon needs our help.”
“I don’t know that I can do that,” David said, his gaze flickering around him.
“I know that you care about the dragons, and I know you don’t want anything to harm the ones you work with. In this case, we need to give the dragon as much of a chance as we can. I can’t do it alone. From what I can tell, this storm dragon has attacked more of your dragons, and is powerful enough that he’s danger.”
Jason needed David to understand, to help him reach the storm dragon. Doing so was going to be difficult, but necessary.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking,” David said.
“I understand well enough. Since the Dragon Souls attacked you, it tells me that whatever else is happening, your sister is against you more openly.”
“This is nothing,” David said sadly. “This is not the first time this has happened, and I doubt it will be the last.”
Jason shook his head. He couldn’t imagine fighting with his sister like that. He and Kayla shared a better relationship, and neither of them wanted to attack the other, at least as far as he knew. His sister wanted to help dragons now as much as he did.
What would have happened if she had chosen otherwise?
He didn’t even know. All he knew was that because of his relationship with his sister, because of the fact that she had willingly worked with him, the dragons were safe.
“I can’t imagine you want to fight with your sister over this.”
“We have very different opinions.”
Jason held on to the illusion, squeezing it around them, and wanted nothing more than to try to trap the Dragon Souls within it, to hold them there, to ensure that he and David were safe. He wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but as he looked over at David, he believed that he could get the other man to help. He needed him to help.
“What do you propose?” David finally asked.
“We need to find the storm dragon.”
“And then?”
“And then we need to find some way of deflecting his attack.”
“I don’t know that I can just deflect the attack,” David said.
“And I don’t know that I can destroy him.”
“Then perhaps we can’t work together.”
David turned toward him, and another sense of power began to build.
16
Jason braced for the attack. He had come to David thinking that he would be able to work with him. He had seen the way that he cared about the dragons, and he had seen the way that he had been willing to work with them, not wanting to torment them, but to train them in a way that would allow them to be free.
That wasn’t the kind of man who would want to harm them.
He wrapped an illusion around David, twisting it so that he was trapped within his own illusion. It was one where David would be held within the cell. It would match the same sort of cell that he had been held in. As he held on to it, he turned around, focusing on the other Dragon Souls and thinking about the type of cell he’d experienced. He changed their illusion as well.
It was easier to do now that he had been in it. He thought he could use it to trap them, and he maintained the illusion. The attack began to ease, and when it did, he realized that there was another presence here.
Jason shifted toward it.
Jessica.
“You are more than what you let on,” she said. She swept her hands around herself and the illusion began to fade.
Jason solidified it, drawing through the forest dragon, trying to hold on to the illusion as much as he could so he could ensure that it was stable.
She again swept her hands out in front of her. “I wasn’t sure what to make of you at first. I guess I still am not, but you have power. It’s more than what I expected when I first encountered you. Now that I see you and your interactions with my brother, I suppose I was wrong.” She turned toward David, cocking her head to the side as she studied him within the cell, the illusion that Jason had wrapped around him. “And here I thought you were working with him. Instead, you attacked him. A shame, but perhaps not quite as shameful as it could have been were you any less powerful.”
At least Jason thought he understood why David had acted the way he had. He was doing it for his sister’s benefit, wanting to conceal from her that he was willing to work with Jason. Jason needed to somehow neutralize Jessica.
She was able to dismiss the illusion, but was there some other way to trap her? Could he warp reality the same way he had when he had stepped out of the cell? If he could, then perhaps he could hold her.
“An interesting type of power you possess. Are you the one Therin went after?”
Jason tried to keep his face neutral, but he knew he failed.
Jessica smiled. “You are the one. You know, he spoke of you. He said you were inexperienced, but you had potential.”
Jason glared at her, trying to fight off any impulse to react, but wasn’t sure he was successful. How could he not react; how could he do nothing when she was watching him the way that she was, staring at him with that dark look in her eyes? How could he do anything other than try to fight off her power?
“And yet I think even Therin underestimated you. It wouldn’t be the first time. Therin has made mistakes over the years, and his most recent was taking the eggs, promising us he would provide for them, that we would see great gains, but even in that, he failed. He claimed he learned from one who’d done it. That he could recreate these other creatures. He paid the price for his arrogance.”
Jason said nothing. If she believed that they failed, then he wasn’t going to argue. It was better she believed that they had failed, and better that she didn’t understand the nature of the power he pulled upon, and better that she didn’t go searching for it. If he had worried about Therin finding a way to harm the dragons, this woman was even more terrifying.
“Why did you come here?”
He thought about how to answ
er and decided on honesty. “There’s a dangerous dragon attacking your dragons,” Jason said.
Maybe he could work with her. If he couldn’t trap her, and he wasn’t sure he could, maybe he would have to find some way of convincing her to work with him. If he could do that, he might be able to help the dragons regardless of what they did.
“A dangerous dragon always exists.”
“This one is different. You’ve lost some of your Dragon Soul dragons.”
He watched her, and she gave him no sign that she knew what he was talking about, though he suspected she did. He paid attention to her face and the reaction she gave him and saw incomprehension.
“I’ve seen it.”
“You’ve seen nothing,” she said.
“I have seen it. That’s why I came to David. I thought he would want to help find the dragon. He wanted nothing more than to kill it.”
He glanced over at David, the other man straining against the bars of his cell, but could it be that he was paying attention to what Jason was saying? It was difficult to know how much the other man was aware of within the illusion. It was possible that all he had was an awareness of the cell.
“You don’t want to kill this creature?”
“I don’t want to kill it. I want to understand it.”
She chuckled. How had he ever thought her voice soft? There was hardness even in her laughter. “Understand? It is a creature. It’s meant to be trained. There is no understanding.”
“You might think that, but I think otherwise. We could work together,” he said.
She smiled at him, and once again, there was a strange and dangerous expression in her eyes. Jason doubted he would ever be able to work with her, and he doubted he would ever be able to trust her, but at this moment, all he cared about was whether or not he could use her.
“You would work with me after everything that we’ve done?”
“What have you done but tried to work with the dragons?”
She glanced back at David. “Perhaps you two couldn’t have gotten along. My brother has a soft spot for these creatures. He views them like pets, rather than the tools that they are. He thinks they can be treated with kindness and compassion, but kindness and compassion have killed more trainers over the years than anything else.”
Storm Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 4) Page 19