Night Dragon An Epic Fantasy Adventure - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,69

near him. The illusion the night dragon had created shattered.

Jason felt a flash of the other dragons mixed with the energy of Dragon Haven. The ice dragon must have felt it as well. They hurried toward that sense, focusing on it, and he recognized the power within it. He still felt no sense of the Dragon Haven dragons.

They streaked toward Dragon Haven.

There came an increased sense of power building from him. The earth dragon granted him a connection. Only, it wasn’t that of the earth dragon.

He jerked his head around.

Janeya added to him. Because they shared a connection to the earth dragon, they were somehow connected.

“What are you doing?”

“I could feel the way you’re pushing on power,” she said.

“You can feel it? How?”

“I don’t exactly know, only that I can detect what you’re doing and I feel as if there’s something I might be able to offer to help.”

Jason tried to maintain his hold over that power and he held onto it tightly, gripping it, and could feel some aspect of the way she was pushing out with her own power, giving him more than he would have been able to handle on his own.

Jason turned in place, holding onto the ice dragon and letting the dragon’s power fill him. As he did, he recognized there was some aspect of the magic of the ice dragon he hadn’t tapped into yet. It was a connection to the cold overhead, a distinct and direct connection to the ice and the mountains and the wind and the snow.

As he stared down below him, he could see the forest, and that was it. That was all he saw, though now that he was aware of the illusion, he knew to look for it, and he knew to look through it. There was enough here that he could see, and though he tried to penetrate the illusion, Jason couldn’t do so easily.

What had the night dragon done?

The ice dragon dove.

Jason held tightly and Janeya shifted, spinning around in place so she could grab onto the dragon’s back. She cried out, and for a moment Jason thought that she was scared, but that wasn’t the sound he heard from her.

This was excitement.

She enjoyed flying with the dragons.

More than that, she seemed to enjoy the ice dragon, and she seemed to enjoy the power of the dragon beneath her. It was a strange thing to feel through another person, through a connection that they shared, bound by the earth dragon.

He pushed away that thought. That thought brought him into dangerous territory.

The dragon dove down toward the ground, heading toward Dragon Haven, and then landed in the clearing near it. Jason hopped off the ice dragon’s back, and so did Janeya. The dragon yard stood empty.

His heart started to hammer as he turned to the ice dragon.

“I need you to keep watch. Do you think you can find us again?” Jason asked the ice dragon.

“You are here, so I can find you.”

With that, the ice dragon took to the sky. He leapt to the air, his wings shaking icicles and letting a hint of cold water come raining down.

When the ice dragon was gone, he started toward the city, casting one more glance toward the empty dragon yard.

“Dragons are missing,” Jason said when she found him staring. “There should be several over there.” More than that around the city. All of them were missing. You are needed. “There’s something off here, and I don’t know what it is,” Jason said.

The night dragon had wanted them here.

He would have known, so why not tell Jason?

Maybe he couldn’t.

Despite how he came across, there were things about the night dragon that still felt foreign to Jason. He couldn’t communicate everything on his mind as well as some of the dragons, so maybe he couldn’t have expressed why Jason had needed to come here.

And why had his illusion covered so much of the forest?

As he hurried toward the city, he glanced over, wondering if perhaps he was making a mistake by bringing Janeya with him. He didn’t think so. In the time he’d been around her, he hadn’t the sense from her that she was dangerous, and even more so now that he was somehow connected to her through the shared bonds of the earth dragon.

By holding onto that sense of energy, that connection, Jason recognized that there was something within her that reminded him of a familiar sensation. It was his same desire to protect the dragons. He could feel