hadn’t expected. By holding onto that connection, Jason recognized how that dragon allowed him to probe beyond where he stood. That energy radiated outward, sweeping into the distance.
And he felt the other dragons. Strange that he should be able to detect them so easily. Unless they were not flying.
He looked over at the dragon queen. “Can you feel it?”
“Of course I can,” she snapped. “And I don’t like that you can.”
“Your dragon allowed me to do so.”
“The dragon should not have.” She took a step forward and a continued sense of power streaked away from her, heading out into the distance. It radiated away from her, an energy Jason could feel from within him. “What is it?” the dragon queen asked. There was less of the confidence in her voice than there had been before.
“Those are Dragon Souls and their dragons.”
“Where?” she asked.
“From what I can tell, they aren’t that far from us,” Jason said. “But I worry they are close enough they will come our way.”
Attacking Dragon Souls by himself was hard enough, but if he had to worry about the dragon queen and how she might react, he feared what would happen.
“I thought you said you could manage those dragons,” she said.
“I can manage them, but as I’ve told you, as I heal the dragons and make it so they can’t be influenced anymore, the fight becomes more difficult. More and more of the dragons become controlled by multiple Dragon Souls at one time. When that happens, there isn’t anything I can do to protect them beyond what I already have.”
“Then you have to remove them as a threat,” she said.
“That’s not how I work with the dragons,” Jason said.
“Maybe you give the dragons too much credit.”
The ice dragon began to rumble with energy.
Jason raised a hand, trying to calm him. If he didn’t, the ice dragon would shoot icicles at her. He suspected she had a way of deflecting them, but he didn’t want to run the risk of it just yet.
“You should be more careful with the kind of things you say. The ice dragon doesn’t take too kindly to some of your comments.”
She looked over, seemingly noticing the icicles that had formed on the ice dragon’s wings, the way that they started to protrude, elongating. All it would take would be for the ice dragon to shake, and Jason had plenty of experience with the ice dragon sending his icicles shooting into the distance, streaking at his target.
If his target was the dragon queen, then Jason might have to intervene. He wanted to help her. Despite everything else, Jason thought that he needed to try to help her.
He created an illusion. He thought that would be the easiest way to reach her, and by holding onto the illusion, creating the image of the other dragons he detected out there, he held that sense of energy away from him, focusing on the power he knew to be drifting into the distance. By latching onto that, he could feel the energy of the other dragons. All he had to do was shift the illusion and some aspect of it would become real.
In this case, all he wanted was to show her what he detected.
By holding onto the connection to the earth dragon, Jason did detect something deep beneath the ground, though he wasn’t at all sure what he felt. It was tied to some of those distant dragons, but it was also tied to the Dragon Souls. His combination of connections to the dragons allowed him to be able to feel those powers flowing away, connecting in such a way that he could feel the various dragon energies combining so that he could detect the Dragon Souls.
The illusion formed and he created seven distinct dragons.
Something about the illusion took on a life of its own and Jason barely had to add any element to it. Power flowed from him, swirling into the illusion, created by the nature of what he detected more so than what he pushed out from him. He felt that energy flowing away from him and he held onto it in such a way that it allowed him to continue to maintain his hold over the image.
“Those dragons are out there?” the dragon queen asked.
“I think so. I can feel something of them, though not everything about them. I’m using what I can detect to create something more.”
She headed toward the illusion and traced her hand toward it.
He expected that she would disrupt it,