summoned it from the distant mountains, but even more than that, he could feel the way he summoned it from high overhead. Jason thought he could connect to it in a way that would allow him to call upon some of that power as well.
Strange that he would feel that flow of power so distinctly now.
Always before, he had felt the flow of power coming from the connection he shared with the ice dragon, but in this case, the flow of power he detected came from not only the ice dragon, but it also came from somewhere overhead.
Jason turned to the rumbling sound around him. It began to intensify.
He didn’t think that he was in any danger, but he had come here to the stronghold of these misfits, dragons that had been commanded by Lorren, dragons that had been willing to fight and harm other dragons.
He looked over at the ice dragon. “Maybe you’d better stay in the air.”
“Are you sure?”
Jason focused on the earth dragon, on the power coming off the mist dragons. There was more than one here. He knew there had to be at least three, and there could be even more than that. Lorren had claimed to have hatched a number of dragons, but Jason didn’t really know how many mist dragons that Lorren had managed to hatch. He had no idea how many smoke dragons, either. All of those could be a danger to him.
“As sure as I can be. I’d rather have you be in a position where you can offer assistance if it were needed rather than risk you.”
The ice dragon took to the air.
Jason strode forward, into the mist.
As he did, he drew upon the cold from high overhead. The connection between him and the ice dragon was strong. Only, the longer he held onto the power of the cold, the harder it began to be. The smoke dragons were swirling around him.
Strangely, he felt as if the smoke dragons were trying to create a sort of separation to the power he had over the cold and ice.
Jason resisted, pushing against them, to see if he might be able to prevent them from using their power to harm him. He added a hint of heat, drawing through the distant sense of the iron dragon. He hoped the iron dragon didn’t mind, and worried that the way they had left each other had made the iron dragon upset that Jason would even dare borrow from him, but the power came to him freely.
The only dragon that he didn’t have the kind of connection to that he wished that he did was the storm dragon. That’s not quite true. If Jason had the power of the night dragon, he thought he might be able to use that as well.
He turned, focusing on the power that was around him.
Earth and mist and smoke.
“Reveal yourself,” Jason said, standing in the midst of all of it, holding his hands out to the side. He released his hold on the power within him, trying not to grip cold too strongly, not wanting to do anything that would anger the dragons here. “I’ve come before you willingly. All I want is to have the opportunity to talk, and to see if there’s anything Lorren might have shared with you about how he created dragons of your kind.”
Perhaps that wasn’t the way that he should best address them, but Jason didn’t know what else he needed to do. He could feel that energy within them, and he could feel the way that the power continued to radiate out from him, and he held onto it, trying to see if there might be something more that he could do by pushing out, using the power within him to try to understand it. Even as he did, he didn’t find anything more.
The sense of the dragons rumbled again, coming near him.
Jason could feel one, maybe two earth dragons.
He counted the mist dragons as well. Three of them. That he could tell. There might be more, though the sense of them was tenuous and difficult to fully detect.
“Please work with me,” Jason said. “I know you haven’t been controlled by the Dragon Souls, and that’s why I’ve come to you. I need your help. We face the danger of Lorach, but I don’t want to attack them the way Lorren did.”
That was the critical piece.
Jason looked around, but it was difficult to see much of anything. He had a sense of a bleak