Night Dragon An Epic Fantasy Adventure - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,66
the world.
This was a power that connected them to each other.
He realized what they were doing. They were feeding.
Only, the way that they were feeding was different than what he had seen other dragons do. These were feeding through the connection he had added.
He tried to push more power into them, focusing on that energy, but even as he did, he wasn’t able to add much more to it. He didn’t need to.
The dragons were drawing upon the power on their own. They were growing larger. As they did, he realized something else. The dragons were taking on the size and scale of the bones he’d used in order to create the eggs. The dragons transformed on their own, using the power that he held onto, and they turned that power, becoming something else.
They were powerful. Massive.
And not surprisingly, the most massive of them was a dragon connected to the cold.
Jason turned to that dragon, looking over at the ice dragon hiding behind him, and realized something.
A female.
Females were rare, so having another female was incredibly rare.
That wasn’t all.
All of them were female.
“Do you see what I’m seeing?” he asked Janeya.
“This shouldn’t be.” She shook her head again. “None of this should be. We shouldn’t have any of these dragons. And more than that, to have all of them be female?”
Female dragons, especially like this, misfit female dragons, would change everything. How many other dragons would there be like the night dragon?
How many other dragons would there be like the other dragons he had known?
He looked over at the night dragon. “Did you know that they would all be female?”
“You were needed,” the night dragon said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?”
Jason had felt something that had urged him to come out here, though he hadn’t known what it was. At the time, he had thought it was tied to understanding the misfits and that he would find that understanding of the misfits out here, and he had, but not the way that he had expected.
“You knew.” There was the trembling he’d detected. The connection to earth and the earth dragon. The night dragon had told him that Jason needed to go. Here he’d assumed it was to go find what Lorach intended with the dragon bones, but what if it was about more than that? “Were you responsible for sending me to him?”
“You were needed.”
This was a powerful dragon, and the dragon had to have had some reason, some purpose, in doing what he had done. That something was beyond just a dragon misfit.
He could feel that sense coming from the night dragon.
“What else are we supposed to do for them?”
“You will do what you must, Jason Dreshen.”
“And these dragons?” If Jessica learned of these female dragons, all of them misfits, he could easily imagine what she might do with them. The way that she might try to use them. If she were to do that, Jason didn’t know if there would be anything that he would be able to do to help them withstand it.
He would try. He would fight. He would resist.
Given what he’d already experienced, the power that he had detected in the way Jessica was using the other dragons, Jason didn’t know if it would be enough. Everything that he might do would be not successful. Jason would fail.
The dragons would fall.
And Lorach would gain a dozen female dragons.
When they did, these dragons would suffer.
The world would suffer.
“What do you think that she will be able to do compared to their power?” the night dragon asked.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?”
There came an urging from the night dragon, and Jason recognized what the night dragon wanted him to do, the way he wanted Jason to turn his attention to the other dragons, to focus on their power.
When he did, he recognized something else within them, some aspect of power.
Not only were they connected to the other dragons, but they were somehow bound together. Because they were bound together, they called upon the energy of the other dragons, and they called upon the energy of the world.
That was what would protect them.
The dragons weren’t in any danger.
Not the way he had thought.
The dragons were safe.
He turned his attention back to the night dragon. “That’s what you were after. Did you know they would be bonded in such a way?”
“You gave them power, Jason Dreshen. Much like you gave me power.”
“I didn’t give you power. The others did.”
“You permitted the others to do so. And in doing so, you have changed dragons.