Guard, Henry, William, and others flew with them.
It wasn’t enough.
Jason had been able to help none of the injured dragons.
His heart was heavy and anger filled him, but it was a useless sort of anger.
Through the earth connecting them, he could feel Janeya’s anger as well.
He needed to find some way to get past it, but had no idea what it was going to take.
He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to recover from this, either.
Janeya rested her hand on his back, and he could feel something through the connection that they shared, but it did not matter. How could it?
All he could think about was what had happened. All he could think about was what had been lost and how much Jessica had taken from the world and the way that she had destroyed the dragons.
And it was destruction.
Hopefully he’d managed to get to the dragons first, and with his connection to them, the illusion that he placed over them, along with an attempt to place a healing over them, he had to hope that he would be able to do enough to protect them.
“We have to stop her,” she whispered.
“We will,” Jason said.
Even by bringing the dozen female dragons back into the world, could there be enough? There were new dragons he had hatched, and he would do everything that he could to protect them, but would that be enough?
Did the dragons she’d formed make up for all she’d sacrificed?
They headed toward Lorach.
As he flew atop the dragon, he saw the misfits spread out on either side of him. Not only the misfits, though. The Dragon Guard willing to come had joined him. Henry was there, and even William sat atop his red dragon. They flanked him, surrounding him. Jason could feel those dragons but worried it wouldn’t be enough. Jason had no idea what they would all be able to do, if anything.
Perhaps they wouldn’t be able to do anything. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
They were coming to Lorach to end this. To bring about the final chapter of the war.
And they would do that together.
And the anger continued to fill him, bubbling within him. That was what he had to hold onto. It was the only thing he could hold onto.
Jason stared outward. The energy of Lorach continued to draw him.
“That is Lorach.” Jason sighed, holding onto the power within him. “It’s different than it was the last time I was here,” he said.
The city was enormous. It stretched for miles, built of towering spires, impossibly tall buildings, and gleaming white stone. All of it was filled with the power of dragons. At the heart of it was the palace, twisting spires and towers that stretched high into the sky, creating a burgeoning source of energy.
Through all of it, though, was an undercurrent of something else.
It was something Jason was distantly aware of, something that he could feel as he approached the city. Perhaps it was the fear of the people who lived here. Perhaps it was the terror they felt toward the dragons, something that gave them an edge.
Jason recognized it all too easily.
As they came close, he could feel the energy of Lorach, though it was somehow different than what he had detected before.
“What do you propose?” Janeya asked him.
He motioned to the dragons around him. They followed his lead the same way the misfits had when he had wanted to come to Lorach.
“First, we need to head to the dragon pens,” he said.
“How many dragons do you think will be there?”
Jason shook his head. “I don’t know. I doubt all of the dragons we need to free will be there.”
“How many Dragon Souls will still be there?”
They had destroyed so many, but there were always more. That had been his experience with Lorach. They could always throw more Dragon Souls at them.
“I don’t know, but probably not all that we will need to stop.” Jessica wouldn’t have kept everybody there. She would’ve brought them somewhere else to make it more difficult to be ambushed.
He leaned forward, holding onto the energy within him, feeling the power of the ice dragon beneath him. He felt the energy of all of the misfit dragons there within him.
There was dragon power all around him, and in feeling it, Jason tried to hold onto it, knowing that he might need to use a bit more of the energy within him, but knowing as well that there might be limits to just how much of