Night Dragon An Epic Fantasy Adventure - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,23

said.

“I want to do whatever I can to help free as many of the dragons as I can,” Jason said.

“I know. That is why I help.”

“I don’t know that I’m doing that good of a job with it, though. Even knowing what to do and everything that I can do to help the dragon, I still feel as if it’s a struggle.”

Jason looked out into the distance. He could feel the energy of everything moving past him, the swirling sky, the power that surrounded them, coming through the ice dragon to him. He breathed it in, letting that energy connect to him through the dragon. Even in that, Jason realized what he was doing.

He was borrowing from the dragons.

Maybe that was a mistake. Everything he did, all the power that he used, borrowed from the dragons. More than that, everything that he had done had involved the dragons. Perhaps it was time that ended.

The dragons needed to have freedom, and they didn’t need people like Jason or the others from Lorach or Dragon Haven to continue to use their power.

How was he going to be able to ensure that didn’t happen?

He didn’t know. Perhaps there was no way for him to ensure the safety of the dragons and to ensure they weren’t used. When this was over, though. When Lorach was defeated. When Jessica no longer used the Dragon Souls to attack.

Then the dragons could be free. They could be free of human influence.

He wondered if they would embrace that or not.

Feeling the energy coming off the iron dragon, the power and the frustration coming from him, Jason couldn’t help but feel as if that might be exactly what they wanted.

Then there was what he felt from the ice dragon. There was the power freely given, flowing through him, and he recognized that perhaps he didn’t feel quite the same way. He was but one dragon, and Jason wondered how many others were like the iron dragon, feeling that frustration. How many of the dragons of Lorach, and of the free dragons now in Dragon Haven, felt that same way?

Probably far more than Jason had ever known.

Here he had been using that power, drawing upon it freely, letting it flow through him, and perhaps that was his mistake. He shouldn’t be calling upon it, letting it fill him. Jason needed to be far more careful with the way that he called upon that energy, no longer borrowing it but trying to find a way to power on his own.

They headed over the mountaintops. He pushed those thoughts away, as well. It was time to focus on the reason that he’d come.

“Let’s see what we can find of Lorren and his dragons.”

6

They had been flying for the better part of an hour, circling high over the mountaintops, drifting throughout the various locations within the mountains, but every place they went, Jason felt nothing other than the sense of cold. He thought he might be able to find the mist dragons, but even if he couldn’t find them—or the smoke dragons, he realized—he thought that he might be able to detect something of the earth dragons, but there had been no sense of either of them.

“Where do you think the dragons have gone?”

“Someplace where they thought they could be safe,” the ice dragon said.

“We should have trailed them so that we could know where they went,” he said.

“Do you think that would have allowed them to be safe?”

Jason shook his head. He didn’t really know, not anymore. When it came to the dragons, when it came to what they had been going through, he wondered if there was any real safety when they were in contact with people.

As he felt the power of the ice dragon, he pushed it out, using that to sweep along the mountainside, searching for anything unusual. So far, he detected nothing.

As he flew, Jason’s frustration began to build.

It was a different source of frustration than what the dragons felt. In this case, Jason was frustrated because he knew there should be something out here, something he should be able to detect, but even as they traveled, he couldn’t find the earth, mist, and smoke dragons. He breathed out a frustrated sigh, holding on to the energy within him, thinking about that power and thinking about whether there truly was some method he might be able to use to find them. So far, he had come up with nothing.

Jason looked into the distance. Snow covered the mountains and