the ice dragon, the moisture dripping off him revealed just how much he struggled.
“Can you feel anything through this?” Jason asked, holding the bone out to the ice dragon.
The ice dragon rumbled softly, and there was a bit of energy that came off him. “It has been burned,” the ice dragon said.
Jason held onto the bone, turning it from side to side, feeling for the energy within it.
Burned? Maybe that’s why it feels off.
He looked behind him. This had to be a place of Lorren’s, only why would it be here?
He got to his knees, holding onto the bone, trying to feel for the energy within it, but recognizing that there was still something off about it.
“Why did you want me to find this?”
“Him,” the earth dragon said.
“I understand that it’s him. I understand he was doing something with dragons, trying to create other misfits. What was it?”
“Him,” the earth dragon said again.
Jason tapped the bone against his hand and turned it from side to side, feeling the energy within it and wishing that there was something different that he could do with it, something different that he could feel from it, but every passing moment gave him no further answers.
“You brought me out here for a reason. You brought me to the other place for a reason. You wanted me to know that Lorren had places like this?” He looked down and dropped the bone.
As soon as he did, the ground rumbled even more.
Jason grabbed it and held onto the bone again.
“Fine. I won’t drop the bone, but you do need to tell me why I need to hold onto it. You need me to know what you intend.”
“Him,” the earth dragon said again.
Jason let out a sigh of frustration but realized that maybe that was a mistake.
The earth dragon was trying to reach out to him, and because of that, he needed to reach out to the earth dragon and to see if there was some way for them to connect.
When he had done it before, he had used illusion, and he did that now.
He held an illusion, creating a vast meadow with a sun shining down and a gentle breeze. The earth dragon rumbled for a moment until the illusion took hold.
Jason shifted it the way that he often did when working with illusions. It wasn’t difficult, as the earth dragon didn’t struggle against him, not trying to fight past what he was doing. Instead, the earth dragon seemed to welcome the illusion. Jason kept the ice dragon out of this although distantly, he was aware of the ice dragon pressing inward, trying to pry his way into the illusion, but he didn’t want that imposition. He needed for the earth dragon to have enough of a separation he felt comfortable revealing to Jason his reason for having come here.
“You brought me here,” he said, standing in a meadow with flowers of dozens of different colors sweeping around him. He didn’t have enough control over the illusion to create the aromas coming from the flowers, though he suspected he could if he were to work with the illusion longer. Holding it this firmly, and shifting into a way that created something more real, was challenging enough. “You wanted me to see this, though why? What is it that Lorren had here that you needed me to know?” He summoned the image of the bone, and something about it caused the illusion to shimmer.
That was odd.
It was almost as if the bone itself were corrupted, and introducing it to the illusion corrupted the illusion.
“Is that it? Did you want me to know that Lorren was somehow poisoning dragon bones?” He shrugged. “Does that even matter? The bones are useful, but at the same time, the bones cannot harm us.”
The dragon rumbled and the flowers in the meadow trembled as if reacting to the way that the earth dragon shook.
“If you need me to understand more, then help me understand.”
Jason reached out, pressing his hand toward the dragon, and when he did, there came a bit of resistance.
“Tell me what you need from me.”
“Him,” the earth dragon said, this time more softly.
Jason realized that the dragon was telling him more than he had realized before.
It wasn’t just him. It was something else. It was a rumble of knowledge, a rumble of the dragon trying to give him something more, attempting to share what he needed to know. The problem was that Jason didn’t know what it was. Jason couldn’t