but nothing happened.
Partly that came from how strongly he held onto the illusion, but partly it came from how he was able to feel the other dragons that he pushed into the illusion from where he was. Those dragons were near enough that he could feel them, and he could feel their energy. He stepped toward her, holding onto the power of the illusion, using everything in his power to maintain it. As he did, he could feel the energy coming off him. And he could feel how it echoed with the sense of those distant dragons. By holding onto that sense, Jason recognized that there were these seven dragons, but there was more to it.
Somehow, through his connection to the earth dragon, he felt something else. At first, he didn’t know what it was, but he began to recognize it. The power of Dragon Souls.
There were a dozen. Maybe two times that.
Enough that Jason wouldn’t be able to neutralize them very easily. It would take considerable effort on his part, and with the dragon queen along with him, Jason didn’t know if the two of them would be able to withstand the Dragon Souls.
Still, she needed to see the dragons could be saved. Wasn’t that what he had brought her here for?
“Come on,” he said.
“Where now?”
“We’re going to free those dragons.”
“I thought you were afraid.”
Had he said that?
Jason didn’t think that he had, and even if he were afraid, he doubted that he would admit that to her. “I think we can do it, but you’re going to have to let me do most of it. If you do anything, you run the risk of harming the dragons, and I’m not willing to let you do that.”
“I am too separated from my dragons here to be able to do much of anything,” she said.
Jason studied her. Even separated from the dragons himself, he still had access to their power. He suspected the same thing was true for her, regardless of the distance. They might be on the other side of the mountains, far enough away that the dragons themselves couldn’t join her, but she could access their power anyway, much like he could borrow the power of the forest dragon from anywhere.
Jason could even feel the earth dragon as he approached. There was energy within him, and the earth dragon forced his way through the ground, coming quickly toward them.
He worried that he would be opening himself up to the wrong kind of danger if he brought her, but he had to trust, too. He had asked her to trust, which meant he had to.
They climbed onto the ice dragon, who let out a sense of irritation. It came from her comment, and Jason understood.
“She’s not going to do anything to harm the dragons,” he said.
“If she does, I will toss her,” the ice dragon said.
Jason smiled and looked over at the dragon queen. “Did you hear that?”
“I heard,” she said.
“Just work with me. Don’t do anything… thoughtless.”
She glared at him, and then the ice dragon took to the air. Power radiated from the dragon and Jason held tightly to the ice dragon’s back, clinging to the spikes.
As they gained altitude, he focused on the sense of the other dragons. Even from above, he could feel those dragons far below. The more that he focused on them, the easier it was to detect that sense of energy, the power of those dragons. Jason recognized the distant sense of the Dragon Souls, and he held onto that, feeling for it, and then they saw them.
When the dragons came into view, he realized he had been wrong. Here he thought there might be two dozen Dragon Souls, one per dragon, but that was wrong.
There were at least four per dragon. The Dragon Souls all sat two in a row on the dragon’s back, and somehow there were two out on the edge of the dragon’s wings.
Jason stared, but he didn’t have a chance to stare for too long.
The dragons seemed to notice their presence.
Either that or the Dragon Souls seemed to notice their appearance.
Jason used the power of the ice dragon, and he quickly added that of the iron dragon, mixing the two into a stream of water energy, letting that flow out from him. It struck the first dragon—a massive black dragon he realized had five Dragon Souls on his back.
He had to act quickly.
Power flowed out from him and he pushed. There was resistance.
The Dragon Souls continued to hold,