Night Dragon An Epic Fantasy Adventure - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,35

feeling for the energy radiating from the queen dragon.

As he did, he recognized some aspect about it.

Strangely, there was something almost familiar about her power. Jason focused on that power and felt something within him, along with it, that seemed to echo with him.

Why should she be so familiar to me?

“I came here to understand you dragons, not to fight,” he said.

He maintained his connection to the energy within him, the power from the other dragons, letting that stretch away from him, sweeping toward her.

“I’m not like the others. I’m not like the Dragon Souls of Lorach. All I want is to try to help the dragons.”

As he said it, he created an illusion. He used the energy of the forest dragon in order to do so, creating something that was almost real, a sense of the dragon and a sense of her power, binding it together in a way that granted the dragons an understanding of just what he’d done and how he’d done it. He tried to gift them an understanding of him and what he intended. The image formed, though it didn’t form in a way that he fully intended.

The dragon queen spread her wings again and Jason braced for her attack.

Thankfully, she didn’t.

Power built from her and Jason readied for what she might do, the way she might use that power, but her wings simply spread out. The energy coming off her swirled. It was a strange combination of powers.

It was a mixture.

Jason hadn’t been aware of that before, but now that he was, he could feel how the powers she possessed all combined together, all lingering in a way that bound them together.

A mixture of energy. A combination of earth and smoke and mist and… he couldn’t detect what else. How was such a thing possible?

He mixed the powers of the other dragons again, creating a combination of energy.

She watched him, power radiating from her, the energy of the combination of elements coming from the ice and iron and the other dragons bonded together, forming something unique. Powerful.

Something very much like the night dragon.

Jason hadn’t considered that before, but with the realization, he recognized that had to be what it was.

“He made you, didn’t he?” Jason asked, looking at the dragon queen. “You’re here because of Lorren.”

The other dragons were touched by her energy.

Either that, or she was touched by their energy.

With the night dragon, there was considerable energy within the dragon itself. The other dragons had seemed to feed it, giving it the strength necessary in order for the dragon to grow, to develop, and to become the powerful creature that he was.

“Do you know about Lorach?” Jason asked.

He created another illusion, this time using everything in his power in order to focus on the nature of that illusion, trying to hold it so that he could create the image of Lorach, the image of what had happened, and the image of what risk the dragons were in.

As he did, he held that image, though he did so in a tightly controlled fashion. He didn’t intend to create anything that would frighten the dragons. The only thing he wanted was to give the impression of what he had experienced and the understanding of what he knew.

Using a hint of illusion, he added even more power, calling those dragons into the illusion. It was slow. Subtle. And he did so as carefully and cautiously as he could in order to ensure the dragons saw what he saw, that they were aware of Lorach, the dragons they created, even the Dragon Souls. He created them in such a way that they looked as if they were off in the distance, beyond the mountains, but near enough that the dragons would recognize just what he wanted to show them. Jason held that image tightly, holding it within his mind and giving it to the dragons.

Somewhere distantly, the earth rumbled.

He pushed more energy into the illusion, creating enough that he could call the queen dragon into the illusion in a way that wrapped everything up tightly, binding the dragon in such a way that she knew what he was showing her.

More power rumbled within him.

Jason held onto that power, letting it flow out from him.

Within the illusion, he created dozens upon dozens of dragons. He demonstrated the capital city. The dragon pens. Even the slaves locked at the edge of the city.

All of those were things he’d seen, and because of that, Jason could re-create them far more