Night Dragon An Epic Fantasy Adventure - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,48

taught to hate them. There were other dragons that were dangerous, and my people were taught to believe that the dragons would attack. We believed that the dragons were our enemies.”

“You don’t believe that anymore?”

“When I first met him, I understood the dragons weren’t anything for us to fear.”

“They can be feared. The dragons are still powerful.”

“Powerful, but the dragons don’t want to harm us. I think if they were given the opportunity, they wouldn’t even have attacked us before.”

He felt the power coming off the ice dragon and a sense of connection, a communication with the dragon that sent him an understanding.

The dragon turned to the side, tilting his wings, catching the air in such a way that Jason felt the power coming off him. As the ice dragon flew, Jason clutched more tightly to him, holding his knees pinned against the dragon’s sides.

The dragon queen didn’t struggle.

She held tightly to him, using her legs to keep astride the dragon, holding onto him, facing away from the dusting of the wind. “Lorren told me that the dragons enjoyed attacking.”

“Perhaps they do,” he said. “They are dragons. I think what they don’t care for is being controlled.”

Jason wondered what it would take for her to begin to understand the nature of what she and Lorren had done with the dragons, how they had been used. They might not have controlled the dragons the same way Lorach had, but there was still a measure of control in the way that they worked with the dragons. She might not want to believe that, but the way she used the dragons was truly similar.

Jason held onto the power within himself, focusing within that energy, and he connected to the ice dragon. As they flew through the mountains, the wind whipping around, snow swirling, connecting to him, he couldn’t help but feel the power that existed there.

There seemed to be some aspect of it that he thought he might be able to better understand, but even as he focused on it, he couldn’t tell if there was something more.

Power, but it was a strange kind of power.

He nodded to the dragon queen and she turned around, looking away from him.

The dragon continued to fly, heading high through the air, sweeping over the landscape. In the distance, Jason could begin to feel something changing. It was the warmth of this land, the energy of this place, and as they flew, streaking toward the sense of the dragons in the distance, Jason could feel that energy all around him.

They banked, heading toward the ground.

When they landed, Jason focused on the power of the ice dragon, and he looked all around. They landed in a forest, on the edge where the trees began to thin. From here, he could look out, and he was able to make out the changing landscape. A rolling hillside swept in front of him.

In the distance, he felt the power of other dragons. They were the dragons of Lorach. Jason could feel the energy of those dragons, and he was all too aware of how those dragons could be used against them. There came the energy coming off them, that of the Dragon Souls holding onto that power. Jason felt it radiating in the distance.

“Why did you land us here?” the dragon queen asked.

“Because there’s something here.”

She headed away from the ice dragon, toward the edge of the forest, seemingly unconcerned. It surprised Jason that she would be so confident about everything taking place around her.

Power began to build from her. Jason noticed the energy she held and the way that it swirled away from her, heading out into the distance. Even though she was separated from the other dragons, she still maintained something of a connection to them, and she used that power to draw it through her and radiate it out over the landscape. The sense of that power swirled away from her, sweeping out and toward the other dragons. Jason focused on what she was doing, realizing she attempted to probe for them.

What she did was something different, though.

She borrowed the energy of the earth dragon as she probed. Now that he had some strange connection to the earth dragon, such that he was still aware of that dragon as it rumbled beneath the ground, Jason thought he could use the same technique she did. He began to connect to the dragon. It rumbled from someplace deep within him, connecting to the earth dragon in a way that he