Night Dragon An Epic Fantasy Adventure - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,58

to come from dragons.

At least, not living dragons.

He stared, looking around at everything, and realized there were bones around him. Some of the bones were small, little larger than a finger, and some looked to be claws, while others were enormous, bones that were longer than he was tall. All of them gleamed somehow, and not from sunlight, as a faint haze swirled around it. It seemed as if they gleamed from some internal power, as if they emanated the energy themselves.

There were dozens upon dozens of bones here. Hundreds of them.

A dragon boneyard.

Jason touched one of them.

It was a leg bone, at least as far as he could tell. When he held onto the bone, touching it, a surge of energy came up from within it. He looked over at the ice dragon, but the dragon didn’t seem to feel that same surge of energy.

Why should Jason?

“What is this place?”

Janeya swept her gaze around, her eyes going wide. She clutched her arms around herself, and a shiver worked through her. Jason could practically feel the shiver, as if the ground itself, the earth dragon, or some other connection between them, helped him feel what she was feeling. He didn’t know if that was real or not.

“It is a place of death,” she said.

“Is it a place of death, or is it a place of celebration?” He stared, trying to pierce the haze all around him, and as he did, he could feel the energy and power here.

The ancestors.

That was what the blue dragon had said.

He headed to the next massive bone, this one a section of a jaw. He could practically stand inside it. Power built off the bones, filling him again. He looked over at Janeya, but she wasn’t looking in his direction. It was almost as if she didn’t know what he detected.

Could she not feel it?

They were connected by the earth dragon, bonded through that.

Jason ran his hand along the smooth surface of the bone, recognizing the texture, but also recognizing warmth within it.

It was strange that there was still a warmth within the bone, but as he ran his hand along it, he could feel some aspect of the dragon still living within it.

“Tell me more about what Lorren thought about the dragons,” he said. Lorren had collected bones. That had to be significant, though why would he have done that?

“I’ve told you his view on the dragons. You don’t care for it.”

“I don’t, but I recognize he had a different view than I do. And with everything he had done, I have to wonder if perhaps there might be something I need to better understand.”

“Such as what?”

“Such as why he was so willing to sacrifice dragons.” He swept his gaze around, looking at these bones, feeling the energy coming off them and recognizing the nature of their power.

“Lorren believed dragons would come back, though I don’t know if he ever thought there was a specific place or time when they would return.” She looked around the dragon boneyard, her gaze settling on one particularly large bone. She walked over to it, holding her hand above it and closing her eyes. She leaned from side to side, leaving Jason wondering what she could detect. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the heat. Perhaps something even greater than he could detect. “We didn’t talk that much about it. He believed that dragons were part of a cycle, a part of the world, and that they couldn’t ever be fully removed. He believed dragons were too critical to what existed within the world.”

Jason wondered if that were the case or not, but even as he looked around, he couldn’t help but feel as if there was some aspect here that he was missing. He headed deeper into the dragon boneyard and stopped at another long bone. It looked to be the spine, with ribs coming off it. Standing beneath it, he felt as if he were in some sort of shelter, as if he were standing within the dragon itself.

Jason pulled upon the power within him and began to focus it. He held onto that energy and mixed power together. As he did, he recognized something different. Some of that power began to flow into the dragon bones, but it flowed into him as well.

It was a strange tingling sensation, a warmth that worked through him, and a drawing sensation that reminded him of what he had done what he had dealt with the dragon egg. As he continued to