Mist Dragon, page 19
part #5 of Dragon Misfits Series
Jason focused on that, on the iron dragon glove, and pushed more power into it, borrowing as much from the distant dragons within Dragon Haven as he could. He needed to reawaken the iron dragon.
Heat exploded. A connection formed. There was a surge of energy that flowed between them, a drifting of power from one to the other. Jason maintained that connection, embracing it. He borrowed from the dragon pearls, flowing through the dragon glove and outward into the iron dragon. He added the ice dragon again and used that explosion of heat and ice to expand outward as steam. The ground started to tremble. Something began shifting.
Then he felt an awakening.
The iron dragon was there.
Jason pushed through his connection to the iron dragon. “You’re going to have to fight your way out.”
There came a deep rumble. It wasn’t muted this time. Power exploded from the dragon, rolling through the ground. The iron dragon raged, power blasting out of him.
Then he streaked free of his prison, shooting upward before crashing back to the ground. His body glowed a molten metal, and the heat that radiated from him borrowed energy from the dragon pearls, from the other dragons, leaving it slipping along his tired body. There was something else within it. Power, but more than just power.
Something had shifted within the dragon.
Jason hurried to him, resting his hand on the dragon’s side. “You’re free,” he said. He rubbed at his eyes, drying them off. He couldn’t believe the iron dragon was free. He couldn’t believe the iron dragon was here. He had felt him fading, dying. He had felt that connection slipping away.
“Thanks to you,” the dragon said. The timbre of his voice had changed, as if his capture underground had altered him.
Jason didn’t care. All he cared about was that the dragon was free.
He held onto energy, pushing more through the dragon pearls and into the dragon. Each time he did, the dragon released a little more heat. It pulsed, washing along the length of his body, and he continued to build with energy and heat.
He turned to the others. “We need to return.”
“We came to understand how Lorren and Therin created the misfits,” Sarah reminded him.
Jason squeezed his eyes shut. The dragon was safe. As far as he knew, the earth dragons had disappeared. They did need to know more, but he thought there was something more important that they do now. He didn’t want to get in the middle of a battle between Jessica and Lorren, but having felt the effect of the earth dragons and knowing what Lorren had done to them, he thought he needed to help them as well.
The answers Jason needed would be with them. Not looking to the past, trying to piece together how Therin and Lorren had created the misfits, but understanding the misfits that lived.
He climbed on top of the iron dragon’s back, settling himself.
“Jason?” Sarah asked. Her voice was tinged with concern.
He looked over at her. “What is it?”
“How… How are you sitting on him?”
Jason glanced down at the iron dragon. His body glowed with a molten heat, radiating the energy that built from deep within him. It slipped along the length of his side. “I’ve never struggled with his heat before.”
“I understand, but this is…” She shook her head. “We aren’t going to be able to ride with you.”
He focused on the ice dragon. “We need your help.”
It didn’t take long, but the ice dragon streaked toward the ground and dropped down next to him. He stayed a distance from the iron dragon, though he looked over at him, and something passed between them. Could the ice dragon be pleased that the iron dragon had survived? He was never sure how the two dragons felt about each other. They were different, and sometimes that difference created difficulties between them. This time, it seemed as if the iron dragon and the ice dragon were pleased to see each other.
“The ice dragon will take you,” he said.
“Great. I think I might have preferred to ride on the iron dragon,” William said.
Jason grinned and tapped on the iron dragon’s side as they surged into the air. The other two climbed onto the ice dragon and took flight, joining him in the sky.
Jason pushed on the power of the dragon pearls he clutched. He connected to them, sending a communication to the other dragons and Dragon Haven so they would know what they were doing and where they were going. Holding on to that power, he could feel it flowing and radiating from him.
“Where do you have us going now?” Sarah yelled across the distance.
Lorren was after the misfits, but the iron dragon needed to rest. He would protect him, then find Lorren. “Back to Dragon Haven.” Jason stared into the distance before looking down at the iron dragon. “I didn’t do what I needed to, though we survived. That has to be enough.”
As they flew, he had a different sensation.
It was a flutter, a stirring of the wind, and a faint shimmering.
He blinked for a moment and realized what he detected.
The forest dragon.
Lorren must have known about her.
He leaned toward the iron dragon. “She needs us,” he whispered.
They turned, veering toward the distant forest, the others following. It was unusual for the forest dragon to call to him. Usually, Jason summoned her, begging for her help. That she asked for his help now was surprising.
Had he drawn too much power from her?
He didn’t know. The connection that formed between them didn’t reveal that.
It was dark, late in the evening, though with the heat radiating off the iron dragon, there was plenty of light. He had no idea what they must look like from a distance. Maybe a shooting star in the sky, though a massive one at that.
When they landed, Sarah and William climbed off the ice dragon’s back and joined him at the forest edge.
“I thought we were going back to Dragon Haven,” William said.
“We were, but I felt something while we were flying. I think the forest dragon needs our help.”
“Do you think Lorren came here?” Sarah asked.
Jason closed his eyes, thinking about the forest dragon. “I would have said that Lorren doesn’t know how to find this dragon, but maybe he does.”
“Are you sure? Therin knew.”
“Given the forest dragon’s ability to hide herself, I don’t know that he would be able to reach her.” At least, he hoped not. He didn’t think that the mist dragons would be able to overwhelm her power, not when it came directly from her. If they did, or if they tried, Jason would need to intervene. She was the least likely to fight. “I don’t know if she will allow you to see her.”
“And if she doesn’t allow you to see her?” William asked.
Jason chuckled, glancing at the other two misfits before shaking his head. “Then we go back.”
Staying here any longer might not be the right thing, anyway. He was exhausted, not only physically but emotionally. It might make sense to return to Dragon Haven to understand what would be needed to reach Lorren’s dragons. He needed to find out more about him, to know what else might be needed to prevent him from harming other dragons.
First, he wanted to check on the third dragon misfit. He headed into the trees, following the energy within the forest, using that to help him reach her. He didn’t feel her quite as acutely as he normally did within the forest. He expected that given his proximity to her, he would’ve felt something more directly, but there was nothing. Power flowed through him, but he couldn’t embrace it.
He glanced over at the others with him, but they said nothing.
Jason followed the awareness he had of the forest dragon, meandering through the trees, though he couldn’t see her. That didn’t surprise him. When it came to the forest dragon, he rarely could see anything unless she chose it.
The farther he went, the more he recognized something else within the forest.
She was nearby, only she was masking herself for some reason. Did she know he had brought others with him and didn’t want to reveal herself?
He held his hand up. “I need to go by myself from here.”
“Jason,” Sarah started, grabbing for his arm. “It’s not safe to be here by ourselves.”
Jason looked around the forest and could feel the emptiness, other than the forest dragon. “You’re safe here.”
“I don’t like this place,” William whispered. “I feel… Uneasy. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Sarah nodded. “There’s something off here. It’s different. Are you sure that she is here? She brought the storm dragon away. Maybe she didn’t return.”
Jason frowned. He didn’t have the same sense that they did. The only thing he felt was the density of the forest around him, the trees and the canopy and the leaves. That… And the forest dragon in the distance. She was somewhere up ahead, close enough to reach her, but hidden from him.
Why would she be hidden in that way?
He focused on what he could detect of her. There came a fluttering, a faint stirring, and everything about the forest shifted.
There was an illusion around it. It didn’t affect him the same way it did the others. At least he understood why they would be unsettled.
Mixed within that was something else. He frowned. “There’s something else here,” he whispered.
Sarah stepped toward him. “Lorren?”
“Not Lorren. Something.” He frowned. “Stay here.” He followed the draw of the forest dragon, but the sense of something else nearby was close to the forest dragon. He had no idea what it was, only that there was a vague tracing of energy from within it, a pulsing of power and something that suggested there was something else here.
He didn’t think it was Lorren and his misfits. If they were here, he would have detected something from them by now.
He moved carefully forward, holding on to what he could of the iron and the ice dragons. He wouldn’t draw from them—or from the forest dragon—unless needed, but even then, he’d borrowed enough from her recently that he didn’t know if she had much strength remaining. She might have been as spent as he felt.
There was power still available to him. He reached into his pocket and grabbed the dragon pearls that he still had from Sarah. Holding on to them, he drew power through them and embraced it, letting it fill him.
The energy coming from those dragons was different than what he was accustomed to using. Maybe he should use dragon pearls more than he did. It did grant a different sort of strength. Having faced Lorren within Dragon Haven, he had seen how that power could be utilized. He had become so dependent upon the ice and the iron dragon, along with the forest dragon, that he rarely even contemplated using other dragons.
He moved forward and heard a stirring behind him.
Jason spun, and Sarah and William were there.
“I thought I said—”
“I heard what you said,” Sarah said. “But we aren’t letting you go off by yourself if there is something here.”
Jason would have to ask the forest dragon for forgiveness. There was something else here. He pushed the power out from the dragon pearls, letting it flow into the forest as he probed gently.
Only, it must not have been so gentle. Something reacted to him.
It took a moment to realize it was the forest dragon. She reacted strongly—almost too strongly.
“Something’s wrong,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
He hurried forward. “I don’t know. All I can tell is that something isn’t right.” He focused on the power of the dragon as he ran, knowing that he needed to understand her reaction. Could she have been attacked by Lorren? He didn’t know if that were the case, but the energy he felt was off.
It was near now.
He moved carefully, holding his hand up as he approached, feeling for the power out there. He pushed, this time adding a hint of the ice and the iron dragon, avoiding using the dragon pearls, as that had caused her initial reaction. There was no pressure against him this time.
Jason pushed again, letting energy build within him, the combination of the two dragon misfits mingled as they swept through the forest. He could feel the forest dragon in the distance.
He called upon her power, using just a hint of it, little more than that, and could feel the way that energy swirled around him. He borrowed from it, using it to sweep outward.
Something was going on.
He started forward again. This time, he noticed a rippling. A shimmering.
It was illusion.
He hesitated, motioning to the other two.
“She is using an illusion here. I don’t know what we will find when we go through it, but you need to be ready for anything.”
“What sort of illusion?” William asked.
Jason shook his head. “I don’t know, but if the forest dragon made it, then it will be incredibly powerful. It is likely going to be nothing that you have ever known and will feel impossibly real.”
It was surprising to Jason, though. Why would she hold onto an illusion within the forest? Could she be in danger?
He called upon even more power from the two other dragon misfits. Thankfully, they had continued to recover, and the energy they lent to him was far more considerable than it would have been earlier. He let that power flow through him, heat building and mixing with the energy of the ice dragon. Steam radiated from him. He tried not to think what that meant.
He headed forward and toward the illusion. The other two stayed with him. When they stepped through the illusion, the forest shifted around him.
It was still a dense forest with trees rising all around, vines growing from them, but there was an opening that Jason didn’t remember having been here before. Moonlight streamed down, and he didn’t know if that was illusion or not. It created shadows that seemed to ripple, shimmering everywhere. The power here was different than anything he’d ever felt before. All of this was an illusion.
At the center of the clearing was the forest dragon. She curled around the ground, raising her head and looking at him as he approached. Jason tested the connection he shared with her, wanting to ensure that she was real and not merely more illusion. In the faint moonlight, her scales fluttered, catching shimmers of light, mixing with the shadows. The deep greens and blues that were on her scales usually seemed to shift and shimmer. There was something that felt wrong.
“Are you injured?” he whispered as he approached.
She breathed out a streamer of mist. Maybe she was connected to the mist in a way that he hadn’t known. Energy radiated from her, flowing outward, creating pressure—and the illusion.
“If you’re not hurt, then what is this?” Jason approached, holding on to the energy within him of the other two dragons.
“It is something,” she murmured as she turned her attention down toward her belly.
Jason approached carefully, and could feel Sarah and William alongside him. He maintained his hold on the other misfits, that power, unable to shake the feeling that something unusual was taking place and wanting to be ready for whatever it might be. As he neared the forest dragon, he realized what she was doing. She curled around the shape lying on the ground near her. At first, Jason thought she curled around a stone, but that wasn’t it at all.
An egg.
Sarah gasped. “Is that—”
“A dragon egg,” Jason said. He looked over at the forest dragon, meeting her gaze. “She has a dragon egg.”
18
J ason could scarcely move. All this time, he had believed the strange energy he’d felt had detected had come from Lorach, but that wasn’t it at all. It was the forest dragon. Her reluctance to give power over the last few days to weeks made a bit more sense. She was here with this egg. Not only that, but when she’d laid the egg, Jason thought he’d somehow felt it. He had no idea how he had, other than the fact that he was connected to her. Maybe that was why he had felt it.
Unless…
He might not have been the only one to have felt it.
Could Lorren have known? What if that was the real reason he’d come to Dragon Haven and not because of Lorach or what Jason had done? It fit with what Lorren had said. His reasoning for coming now.
This had to be what he wanted Jason for.
This was why he wanted the misfits.
Jason crouched on the ground and took a seat near the forest dragon, crossing his legs as he held onto the energy coming from the other dragon misfits. He hadn’t come any closer to the forest dragon, though he could feel the power of illusion all around her and suspected that what she had placed around her was significant—and had a significant meaning. Likely it was to protect this egg.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jason asked.
“There was no need,” the forest dragon said.
Jason stared at it. The egg was different. He didn’t know how to describe it any other way, only that it looked like an oblong stone. Shadows swirled around it, the darkness or illusion making it seem impossibly black. “Is it a dragon misfit?”
The forest dragon breathed out, and again a streamer of mist went with it. “Yes.”
Jason focused on his connection to her and could feel something between them. Their bond had always been unusual, different than it was with the ice dragon or the iron dragon. In reality, each of the dragons shared a different sort of connection with him. With the ice dragon, it was a connection to his homeland, a familiarity with the cold and the ice and everything that he had experienced while growing up. With the iron dragon, it was the rage and anger they both shared knowing they had suffered. With the forest dragon, it had been tentative at first but had built, allowing a greater connection between them.
She had always been tentative with him. Even when she’d been used by Therin, there had been a hesitation. He thought he understood that now. Still, he could feel power flowing from her. It formed the illusion, but it drifted outward, beyond her, and surrounded the entire clearing but concentrated upon the egg.
There was energy here. Significant energy. Much of it came from the egg itself.
“The storm dragon,” Jason said. He turned to Sarah, then to William. “I think this is the forest and the storm dragon’s egg. If so, it was a union of two powerful dragon misfits. An egg like this, and the dragon that would emerge, would be incredibly powerful.”
