Mist Dragon, page 14
part #5 of Dragon Misfits Series
He shook his head. “I don’t really know. The sense of the dragon hasn’t changed. I can feel the dragon pearl, though I don’t know where it is to be pulling on me.”
“Maybe it’s not within the city.” William looked around. “Didn’t you say the dragon came from somewhere beneath the city?”
“The iron mines. Varmin is known for its iron.”
He needed to wander through the mines. He might not know his way through them, but the iron dragon would, and he should be able to help guide them. Perhaps it was something he should have done long ago. Jason had long understood his connection to the ice dragon, but only because he had come from the same place. By not coming back here and fully understanding the iron dragon, he felt as if he had missed an opportunity to better know the dragon he had bonded to.
They continued onward, passing a few other shops. In one of them, the sound of hammering rang out, that of a blacksmith. It was the only sound of activity that they heard. He turned a corner, and for the first time saw several people making their way along the street, heading in the opposite direction and away from them. They moved along the street, farther down the slope of the mountain.
As they went, he noticed that the strange pulling sensation from the dragon pearl started to shift. It seemed to guide him.
“You know where you’re going?” William asked.
“I can feel something. It’s that way,” Jason said, pointing.
Sarah frowned at him. “That’s not how our connection to the dragons works,” she said.
“Maybe I’ve become sensitized to them.” He couldn’t help but feel as if he were heading in the right direction. This was leading them somewhere.
It probably guided Lorren to the same place.
The city started to thin out. The buildings became more widely spaced, and trees towered on either side of the road. A building near the outskirts of the city had trees on either side of it. It was a long, low-walled building, and likely a warehouse. For whatever reason, it seemed to be the source of the dragon pearl energy he felt drawn by.
Jason pointed to the building. “I think it’s coming from here.”
He paused, looking at the door, but it seemed nothing more than solid oak. The building was situated far enough from others in the city that it seemed strange that it would be set here. Closing his eyes, Jason reached for his connection to the iron dragon and could feel the heat radiating to him. If only there was some way to probe through the ground, to use that energy to determine if there was anything they needed to be concerned with.
Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled one of her dragon pearls out, clutching it tightly in her fist before nodding to him.
As he stepped up to the door of the building, he readied his connection to the ice dragon, adding it to what he detected of the iron dragon. Those were the easiest to connect to, and using that power, he thought he could call upon them to reach across the distance and attack were it needed.
Jason knocked.
William chuckled. “I thought you were going to break in.”
“If they come to the door, then we can see if there is anything to be concerned about here.”
“I thought you said you detected the dragon pearl here,” Sarah said.
“Maybe it’s just this place.” He motioned all around him. “This is where the iron dragon came from. Perhaps all I detected is the connection I share with the iron dragon.” He doubted Varmin was hiding Dragon Souls. The people of Varmin were free. They weren’t bound to Lorach.
He waited, holding onto the energy of the iron dragon. The glove glowed faintly on his hand, and he shifted it using his illusion.
“I still can’t get over how easy that is for you now,” Sarah said. She looked down at his hand. “The way you change things. It’s not just your hand, but your eyes too. Did you know that you do that?”
He did it without thinking, using the illusion to change things about himself, and to be honest, he didn’t think much of it. The power flowed from the forest dragon through him. It allowed him to maintain a connection to her, maintaining that bond.
“Maybe I should be more careful with it. If someone watched me, and were aware of what I’d changed, they might question how I could do it.”
William leaned close to him. He pressed his face up toward Jason’s hand, frowning. “How are you able to do it?”
“I don’t even know if I could explain it. Not really. When I use the illusion, I call upon power within me, but it’s also power of the forest dragon.”
William stared for a moment. “She can do it, though.”
Sarah shook her head. “Not like Jason.”
He waited a little bit longer. There was no answer. Which meant that he was going to have to force his way in, at least to ensure that what he detected wasn’t anything they needed to be concerned about. He rested his hand on the door, using the iron dragon glove and letting heat radiate from it, surging into the door. A burst of power exploded, the door coming open as the lock twisted and melted.
“That’s one way to do it,” William said, chuckling softly.
“They will know we were here,” he said. “I had been hoping to avoid that.”
“They were always going to know that we were here,” Sarah said. She stepped forward into the room. Power radiated from her, the dragon pearl in her hand glowing. Flames danced away from her.
Jason followed her into the room. It was a warehouse. He didn’t see or feel anyone else inside, though there still came a sensation of a dragon pearl, only it was faint and almost faded. He swept his gaze around the room. It was a massive, open space. There was a table with papers stacked upon it, and another table with small trunks situated on the table, but otherwise the warehouse was empty.
Jason attempted to open one of the trunks, but it didn’t budge. He used a burst of power through his iron dragon glove, forcing it open. Inside was a stack of coins.
“That might be useful,” William said, reaching for it.
“We don’t need money,” Jason said.
William grabbed for the trunk. “Maybe you don’t, but some of us still do. Besides, if we are stuck here for the night, don’t you think it would be helpful for us to have a way of paying for a room? Food?” He glanced from Jason to Sarah. “Anyway. I’ll hold on to this.”
“Don’t lose it,” Sarah chided him.
He frowned at her. “When have I ever been in danger of losing coins?”
“Jason did tell me how the two of you met.”
“And I seem to recall I didn’t lose coins.”
“You wanted me to lose them.”
William held onto the trunk, tucking it up against his side. “I didn’t want you to lose them. I wanted you to earn more. If there are others like that, would you be so kind as to let me know so that I can hold onto them?”
Jason chuckled and used a blast of the iron dragon energy to open the next trunk. It was also filled with coins.
Sarah scooped them up, letting them fall back into the trunk. “Why do you think they need so much money here?”
“A better question is why they left it here.”
“The door was locked. Maybe they didn’t think anybody was coming in here,” William said, closing the other trunk and lifting it. He grunted. “They’re a bit heavy.”
“Then maybe you should leave them here,” Sarah said.
William frowned at her. “What would be the fun in that? Besides, I haven’t had a chance to get out of Dragon Haven in quite some time. I could use the coin to get away for a little while.”
“And spend time in Varmin?” Jason asked.
“I don’t know. They might be more interesting than what I have experienced in Dragon Haven.” He glanced over at Sarah, flashing a smile. “No offense.”
“You do know you aren’t a captive. You can leave at any time.”
“Why would I have done that?”
She shook her head. “Sometimes you are more trouble than you are worth. Maybe I will just have my mother exile you from Dragon Haven for good measure.”
“Who would train the dragons then?”
Sarah arched a brow at him. “Is that what you call it? I don’t know that anyone would have ever believed you were actually training dragons.”
“Hey! The dragons enjoy me working with them.”
Jason nodded. “They have,” he said.
Sarah shook her head. “Don’t encourage him.”
She wandered over to a bookshelf, pulling books off before setting them back down. She disappeared into a darkened section of the warehouse, though Jason could still feel her. It was as if his connection to the dragons, and the dragon pearls, granted him an ability to know where she was going and what she was doing.
He flipped through some of the books that Sarah had pulled off the shelves, but didn’t see much of use. He didn’t have much time for books. When he had been in his village, there hadn’t been much time to read. His time had been better spent trying to survive.
Sarah returned. “I have been looking for some reason behind the coin and the books and everything here.”
“Maybe they were just collectors,” William said.
Sarah ignored him. “And there is whatever you detected that drew us here.”
Jason frowned. Now that she mentioned it, he realized he didn’t detect it quite the same way that he had before. It wasn’t so much that it was gone, just that the sensation seemed muted. Not absent. At least, not completely absent. Could the warehouse shield it from him? What purpose would there be in that, though?
“What else do we need to do here?” Sarah asked. “We came to Varmin because of the mist, but it’s gone. You detected a Dragon Soul dragon, but now you don’t.” She swung her gaze around before turning her attention back to Jason. “Why the gold?”
Jason looked through here, and other than the gold, he found a dusty table, with a stack of papers. He began to turn away, when he frowned, turning back.
He sorted through the papers.
They were a ledger.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
Jason shook his head. “I don’t… Oh.”
Payments. All of this gold was payments, and it described keeping the dragon here.
The iron dragon.
The more he read, the more understanding began to fill him.
The iron dragon hadn’t been held in Varmin because of Therin. Therin wouldn’t have even known about it.
It had been Lorren.
That was why he had come back here.
Is that why Lorren was here now? Did he think to place another egg, and to create another misfit?
“We need to go to the caves,” he said. “The iron dragon should be able to navigate us through them.” If that was Lorren’s plan, he needed to know.
Sarah nodded, and William pointed to the other trunks on the table. “Should we take those, too?”
Jason shook his head. “Not unless you have some way of carrying all of them.” They stepped back out onto the street beyond the warehouse, and the sudden awareness of the dragon pearl surged again. There was something different about it.
“Do you feel anything?” Jason asked Sarah.
She glanced at the warehouse. “I don’t. Why do you think you feel it outside, but not inside?”
Jason sighed. “I don’t really know. I don’t know what it means, either.”
They continued toward the lower edge of the city, moving down the mountainside. As they went, the strange sensation of the dragon pearl pressed upon him, and he paused, looking around. He would have to figure out where that sense came from and whether he might learn anything about it. So far, he felt nothing other than the drawing sensation.
Power built within him, stretching between him and the iron dragon, and his hand blazed brightly. He must have released the illusion. He hadn’t even known that he had done so. Most of the time, he could see through his own illusion and wasn’t aware of which ones he held in place, though maybe he needed to focus on them. He used his connection to the illusion, diminishing the glove’s brightness. On a whim, he decided to change his appearance altogether. He shifted his facial features, making them older, and then swept the illusion around his cloak, changing that along with his dragonskin. It was only illusion, nothing else, but for some reason, he felt better having done so.
Turning, he found Sarah watching him, frowning. “What is it?”
“You look different.”
“I used my father as inspiration for changing my appearance.”
“That might be useful. Can you do it for me?”
Jason used a swirl of illusion and wrapped it around her, using her mother as inspiration. He turned to William and aged him as well.
William glanced down at the trunks he held and chuckled. “It would have been nicer had you made these a bit lighter.”
Would that be possible? “I might be able to help with that,” he said.
He hadn’t given much thought to it, but what was illusion but a frame of mind? Could he do something that would help William with the weight of the trunks? It would be a different use of illusion than what he had attempted before, but in this case, he wondered if perhaps it was the right use.
He called upon the energy of the forest dragon, letting the connection between them build. Power flowed through him from the forest dragon. Using that, he shifted the trunks. It was a simple thing, now that he considered it. It tilted the power within the trunks.
William’s arms jerked up, and his eyes widened. “How?”
“I changed it so the trunks weren’t as heavy,” Jason said.
“I don’t even know how you can do that,” William said.
Sarah shook her head. “He shouldn’t be able to.”
He chuckled. “You should be thankful I can do it. It was because of the illusion that we were able to escape from Jessica in Lorach in the first place.”
He found Sarah watching him and couldn’t read the expression on her face, but he sensed that she was bothered by something.
“Can you make them smaller?” William shifted the trunks on either side of him. “It might be nice if I could tuck them into my pockets.”
“Don’t press your luck,” Sarah said.
Jason wondered whether it would be possible. How much of reality could he truly shift? Maybe the better question was how much of reality did he want to shift. He had no idea whether it would hold. At some point, it was possible the illusion would shatter. If it did, then William would find the trunks were heavy again, and if he were to place them into his pockets, losing the illusion might tear them away. Maybe there were limits to how he could and should use illusion.
“I think she’s right. It’s probably not a good idea.”
They continued along the streets. After a while, Sarah glanced behind her. “It’s so different than other places we’ve visited. Some parts look abandoned.” Her voice was a whisper, and she swept her gaze all around. Tension filled her, and were it not for Jason’s illusion, he suspected she would have a dragon pearl clutched in her fist, glowing.
“Dragon Souls shouldn’t come to Varmin. There’s no reason for them to.”
Sarah glanced at him. “They did before.”
He needed to use his connections now. He focused on the ice dragon circling overhead. “Can you find anything? Do you see the mist?”
He used the connection he shared with the ice dragon, looking through his eyes for a moment. He could make out the city and the ground around him, but nothing else.
The ice dragon rumbled from high overhead, but there came no flicker of the mist through their shared connection. Instead, he saw movement—a bright light that flared in his strange vision. A dragon.
“That’s where we have to go,” he said.
They headed toward the edge of the city, and from there he paused and looked around. The ice dragon rumbled again, and another rumble came from farther down the slope. This one was farther from the edge of the city. All attempts on Jason’s part to try to detect power from the dragon pearl faded.
“Can the two of you slow down?” William panted. “These trunks are still bulky, even if they aren’t heavy. I told you it would be easier if you had changed their size.”
Jason glanced over. William’s face was red, and he gasped for air. “Be thankful I changed anything about them.”
He could feel the distant dragon. Now that he could, he thought he might be able to identify where the dragon was located. As they headed forward, he caught sight of it.
It was nestled between trees at the far edge of the city, moving downslope. Toward the iron mines the city was known for.
Jason held his hand up. “Wait.”
He reached for his connection to the ice and iron dragons. He combined that power and swept it away from him, forcing it into the distant dragon. He detected something, but didn’t know if it was resistance.
Could this be a trained dragon of the Dragon Souls?
Jason swept that power together again, trying to combine it, and found a bit of resistance from a distant dragon. It was there, just has he suspected.
“I think it’s—”
Jason cut off when he saw something else. Mist sweeping out from the trees. His breath caught, and he spun around.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
Jason glanced over at her. “Lorren. I think he’s here.”
13
J ason raced downslope toward the dragon. As he ran, he tried to connect to it using a combination of the ice and iron dragons. That might not be enough. At this point, he needed to find a way to bridge a connection between them.
The forest dragon.
By adding power from her, he might be able to shift something to change that distance. He closed his eyes for a moment, halting his running. “I’m not going to harm you,” he said. He used the power of the other two dragons to send the words.
Something swirled around him. Jason could feel that power. It pressed in upon him, making his attempt to connect to the forest dragon difficult.
The mist dragons.
He opened his eyes, looking around. As the mist continued to swirl, Jason maintained his connection to the other dragons. He used the ice dragon, trying to freeze the mist. It solidified, and he sent a pulse of ice through it again, slamming into the mist.
