Night Dragon An Epic Fantasy Adventure - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,39
his Dragon Soul dragons. They were powerful, and they could fly great distances, but Jason had seen limits to them.
Of course, the ice dragon had a different type of limitation.
Jason focused on the energy around him.
“Lorach isn’t the only danger,” she said.
“What other danger is there?”
“More than Lorach,” she said.
Her gaze drifted to the sky and Jason followed it, wondering what else she might know, but she said nothing more. The earth dragon continued to rumble, connecting to her, through her, and in doing so, shared something Jason understood.
He laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” she snapped.
“Only because I think I understand why I’m able to understand you and the earth dragon.”
“Because he has permitted,” she said. “He has betrayed me.”
“Nope. I think he has connected to you, but the reason I’m able to understand the earth dragon is because of you.”
“Me?”
He shrugged. “I think it’s you. You’re putting off energy, and you’re connecting to the dragon.” He thought about what he detected when he was near the Dragon Souls, along with what he detected from those within Dragon Haven. “What are you suffering from here?” he asked.
Jason focused on what he could see through the ice dragon’s eyesight, using that to augment what he could make out, especially now that he had this woman in front of him. The landscape around him was all flat earth, and there was no longer any smoke hanging that obscured his ability to see anything. The ground was bleak, and he saw no sign of city or villages or any other evidence of life.
Why would she have been here?
The ice dragon continued to circle, making ever larger arcs as he did, allowing Jason to try to see beyond what he had managed to see so far. With each sweeping arc, he could barely make out the changing ground beneath him. Distantly, Jason thought he caught sight of a forest and perhaps even a city’s first vestiges, but he couldn’t tell.
He had to turn his attention back to the girl.
She stared at him for a long moment before shaking her head. “You wouldn’t care.”
“Are you under attack?”
“No.”
“Then why did you react the way you did with me?”
“Because it was necessary,” she said.
“It wasn’t necessary. I didn’t come here to fight.”
The earth dragon didn’t seem as if he had drawn Jason here for a fight, either.
As he looked at the earth dragon, and as he felt the power coming from him, he couldn’t help but feel as if there was something more that he needed to understand. He focused on that power, feeling it within him. The earth dragon began to rumble with a different frequency.
Strangely, that frequency came up from the ground, through his boots, and Jason could feel it. Gradually, words became a part of what he felt.
The earth dragon spoke to him.
He had done so before, but the way that he did now was different.
Jason watched the dragon queen, but it didn’t seem as if she heard what the dragon said to him. It was separate. It was meant only for him. If that were the case, then he had to listen.
“We are alone.”
“That’s why you came for me?”
“When Lorren lived, we were not alone. He kept us safe from Lorach.”
Safe? That didn’t sound like what Jason had seen Lorren doing with the dragons. “He used you to attack in Lorach.”
“He gave us the choice.”
“Did he?”
“He gave us the choice,” he said. “And he searched for the answer.”
“What answer?”
“The answer to after.”
Jason frowned. There was something he didn’t quite understand. Yet.
He focused on the energy he felt coming from the earth dragon, and he listened to the rumbling. He watched the dragon queen as he did, feeling the power coming off her. “Are you keeping her from hearing?”
“I am keeping you bound to me.”
“Bound?”
The idea of having the dragon bound to him suggested something else.
Given his experience with the other dragons, and what he knew of his connections with them, he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps there was something more. Some other reason.
If that were the case, then…
He focused on the power beneath him, the energy of the ground, the energy of the rumbling that he detected. As he did, he could feel more and more power bubbling up deep beneath him. It started slowly. It was a strange and heavy connection, one that he recognized, but only because he had almost been buried by the earth.
He wondered if he would have the same understanding of it had that not happened.