Mist Dragon, page 27
part #5 of Dragon Misfits Series
“This is where you acquired that wonderful dragon,” he said, turning to Jason. He held his hands up, and snowflakes danced upon his palms. Lorren had gained control over the illusion already. “The other may be mine, but that one is all Therin’s.”
It was vastly different than when Jason had faced Therin. At least Therin hadn’t been able to overwhelm Jason’s ability with the illusion. With Lorren, not only did he have control over the illusion, but he had more strength than Jason. He could use that and control the illusion, twisting it.
“You have interesting control,” Lorren said, turning to him.
Snowflakes rippled, turning to a shimmering rain. Jason attempted to regain control over the illusion but could feel Lorren resisting him. He strained as he reached through the forest dragon to summon energy, but failed.
Lorren stepped toward him. The rain shifted with him. “You have potential, but you are inexperienced. I’m surprised you eliminated Therin. Of course, Therin was often too arrogant for his own good.”
“You aren’t going to hurt the dragons.”
“I’m not going to do what?” The rain shifted and now began to spiral around him. There was a strange twisting to it. This time, Jason realized what Lorren did. He turned the rain into a violent mist, accosting Jason and preventing him from doing anything. “As soon as I’m done with you, I’m going after that one. I will have your dragons, and then I will claim the one she created.”
At least Lorren didn’t know anything about the other egg from the forest. At least he didn’t know about the one in Dragon Haven.
Lorren grinned at him. “And when all of that is done, I will go to Dragon Haven, and I will find the other. The one you have been trying to hide from me.” He sneered at Jason. “Did you think I wouldn’t know? Did you think the dragons wouldn’t tell me?”
Jason’s heart hammered.
Unless he stopped Lorren, that dragon, and that egg, were in danger.
Not only that, but Dragon Haven was in danger.
He would have to stop him.
This was not a man he could work with. This was not a man he wanted to be like.
He tried to grab for more energy and power, but couldn’t do anything other than what he had already done. Lorren assaulted him, power building and hammering at him, swirling mist and energy twisting around him. Jason tried to hold his hands out and brace himself against that power, but there was too much.
He held his hands away from him, bracing, but couldn’t.
There had to be another way.
It wasn’t going to be illusion. Lorren used his mist dragons in the illusion primarily. That was his connection to power. That was the way he overwhelmed Jason, who had to find a different way to overpower him.
Maybe heat would work.
He added heat, then ice, mixing the two. Given the way Lorren had control over the illusion, the moment Jason shifted one thing, Lorren shifted it to something else. It wasn’t going to work that way. Jason needed to try something more. There might be another way of reaching through the illusion and overpowering Lorren.
Heat, then ice, then the forest dragon.
He called on each of them, but none were enough. The moment he pushed out with one power, Lorren tried something else. Lorren took a step toward him, and everything shifted. He changed reality. The suddenness was jarring, but Jason barely reacted, pulling himself back into the icy landscape. He held onto it, forcing the ground to be solid, for snow and ice to swirl around him, and for the ice dragon to be here.
The power was significant. Jason struggled against it, straining, but Lorren used power in a way Jason couldn’t counter.
He had to call upon the forest dragon. She relied on a different technique for illusion than that of the mist dragons. It was similar enough that Lorren could overwhelm it, but this was the forest dragon. She was the master of illusion. Jason could borrow her power, fumbling through himself. He embraced that power as it built. He had to find the core of that energy.
He added hints of ice and iron, mingling them together.
There was another sense buried within him that he hadn’t detected before. The energy of it was there, one that he was familiar with, having recognized it when the dragon egg fed. It was electric. It left him crackling with energy, rumbling along his skin, deep within him.
Jason thought he understood. When he had been helping feed the dragon egg, he had pulled upon power from each of the dragons. That included the storm dragon. He called that power to him.
It crackled, bursting through the air.
Of all the dragons, the storm dragon was one of the most potent and difficult to overwhelm. It was the reason Jason had been concerned about the storm dragon and how he would interact with the others. Now that he could feel it and was aware of his power, he had to think there was some strength that he could use that he had not before.
Jason called that power to him. A bolt of lightning struck.
Lorren glared at him. “Nice trick.”
“It’s no trick,” Jason said.
He called another bolt of lightning, and it nearly blasted Lorren before he blocked and deflected the power. “You will provide me with that dragon. You could even be a part of it. You could help. Together we could destroy Lorach. I’ve seen the look in your eye. I have seen that you want to do it.” He flicked his gaze to the sky. “We can ensure the dragons are saved.”
Jason took a deep breath. Had Lorren propose that when they had first met, Jason might’ve been convinced. Even now, there was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to defeat Lorach that considered it. As much as he hated it, he thought that maybe they could work together.
But not like Lorren intended.
“I can’t do it like you. The dragons can be saved. Truly saved.”
“Not when they’ve already been tainted,” Lorren said.
That told Jason all he needed to know about Lorren. As if there were any question, Lorren answered it.
Tension built within Jason, a rumbling sort of energy. He had to add to it. He needed the power of the storm dragon, but also that of the ice dragon and his ice lightning, that of the iron dragon, and even the forest dragon. All of that energy was here, and it filled him.
Deep within him came another sense.
Power, but different than he’d ever felt.
A rumbling of energy. It took a moment, but he detected the pull of earth.
That dragon was there. Gifting some of his magic to Jason.
Lorren may have connected to the dragon misfits and forced them to serve him, but Jason had a different connection to them. He was a conduit for their power. He mixed them, including earth, and let that power explode.
It streaked toward Lorren. He held his hands up, blocking, as if it were nothing more than an illusion.
It was not.
When the ice lightning struck, followed by storm dragon lightning, the surge of power continued to build, heat, and illusion slamming into him, one after another. It crashed through him, a cascade of energy. Finally Jason relented.
He had to stop Lorren. That was the thought that stayed with him.
He called lightning down. A bolt of electricity. Ice lightning. Fire streaking from the sky. All of it mixed together, swirling within the power of reality and illusion coming together.
Then the ice dragon struck.
He used the powerful spikes of his body and shot ice outward. It pierced Lorren.
For a moment, he feared it might be nothing more than an illusion.
Lorren didn’t get up. Blood pooled around the spikes.
The dragons pressed power through Jason. He didn’t have a chance to control it. It came as a bolt of lightning, mixed with ice and fire, all of that melding together. Earth joined in, much as it had before, a true betrayal of Lorren.
All that power struck Lorren.
Jason was surprised that the dragons would use such violence, but realized why.
There was a layer of illusion over him.
They shattered the illusion, shredding it.
Then Lorren was truly down.
He continued holding his hand up as the mist swirled around him. The power he commanded from the mist dragons worked around him, but the onslaught of power coming from Jason’s dragon misfits continued to strike him.
Jason reached for the ice dragon, grabbing hold of one of the icy spikes on his back and pulling it free. He strode over to Lorren and jammed the icicle into Lorren’s belly.
Lorren stared at him, holding his gaze, his eyes wide before narrowing.
“Perhaps I had you wrong,” Lorren said.
With that, he faded, falling back and crashing to the ground.
The mist swirled around him for a moment before it began to solidify.
Jason held out the icicle, clutching it tightly. He had no interest in battling the mist dragons, but rather than that, he watched as the mist dragons solidified around him, forming a layer, and then the remaining earth dragons rumbled, pulling Lorren’s body underground. It left nothing behind.
The mist dragons started to dissipate, but before they did, they watched Jason for a moment before disappearing altogether from view.
Jason let out a heavy sigh and turned to the ice dragon. “It’s time to go back.”
25
W hen Jason reached Dragon Haven, he was relieved to find it still intact. With everything he’d encountered, and with how powerful Jessica had been, he wasn’t sure what would’ve become of the city. Thankfully, it was still there.
Sarah rode alongside him, looking down upon the illusion, and as they pierced through it, tension within her returned. “I still can’t believe you allowed Jessica to go.”
“It meant saving the dragons,” Jason said.
“Did it?” Jessica asked, turning her head and frowning at him. “Even after everything you’ve seen? Everything that she has done to you? To us?”
Jason took a deep breath, looking away. He understood the anger Sarah felt, but at the same time, he had chosen.
“Stopping Lorren meant saving the dragons. Jessica won’t kill them.”
“Only use them.”
Jason nodded. “She will. And we still have to stop her, but at least this way, we have something to save.” Had he not stopped Lorren, there would have been nothing left for them to save. Lorren would have hunted, killing, and slaughtering dragons until he had what he wanted.
Misfits.
That would have been all that survived.
The other dragons deserved to live, as well. Jason had seen they could be saved. Sarah knew they could be saved, as well, even if she refused to acknowledge it.
Jason had done what was necessary.
Now he would protect the egg.
Then he would have to find some way to reach the misfit Jessica had created. He would have to see if he could call to him, and perhaps even rescue him.
Now they had something else they could do. Dozens upon dozens of dragons were saved.
“You did well,” he said. “You protected those dragons as they were saved. What happened to them?”
Sarah frowned at him, and he sensed her frustration, but she shook her head, looking out upon Dragon Haven. “The others are elsewhere. I’ve tried to encourage them to stay here, but I don’t know if they will.”
The other dragons that they had freed had not remained nearby. It was part of the reason Lorren had grown so powerful.
They had passed the Dragon Guard on the way back and given word to Henry that the battle was over, but he had remained with the Dragon Guard, trying to ensure that any Dragon Soul that might remain was eliminated.
The illusion overhead remained intact, but that wasn’t the only illusion he was concerned about. He probed and felt that it remained unbroken.
As he climbed off the dragon’s back, Sarah nodded. Jason followed the direction of her gaze and saw William racing toward them, his eyes wide, his hair standing on end.
“Jason. Sarah. I’m glad you’re both back. I need you to come with me.”
They shared a look. “Why? What happened? Is the egg—”
William shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the egg, but…”
He grabbed Jason’s arm and pulled him. He had no choice to go along. Sarah followed him.
As they headed into the forest, William glanced over. “I wasn’t sure at first. When I came through here, I wasn’t able to detect anything. I couldn’t get that close. Then some sort of strange pressure built against me. All of a sudden, it was gone.”
Jason stopped, glancing at the sky. Lorren was gone, wasn’t he? “What do you mean that it was gone?”
“That’s just it. Had I not known what was here, and understood that it prevented anybody from getting close, I wouldn’t have even tried. That sense disappeared. I don’t know what it was, only that something changed.”
Jason frowned. There was no reason anything would have changed. No reason unless Lorren had somehow attacked.
Jason focused on the illusion and could feel the effect of it out there, faint but still present. Within the illusion was some other sense of power.
He followed William, Sarah chasing after them.
When they reached the illusion, Jason noticed it as a shimmering veil in front of them. He could see the illusion and was aware of it, but there was something else that was different.
He stepped forward. “It’s gone,” Jason whispered.
“What is?” Sarah asked.
He glanced over at her. “The power I placed here. It was meant to prevent anybody else from getting here.”
“That’s what I was saying. Something repelled me, and I assumed it was something you did.” William glanced over at him, and Jason nodded. “I could feel it. There was a circle of it as if it created a barrier within the forest. Then it disappeared. I don’t know what happened, only that I could get much closer than I could before. There’s still a pressure against me, but it’s different than before. Not nearly as unpleasant.”
Jason focused on that. If there was something here…
Power. Only what kind of power?
He probed with his connection to the dragons, now adding the connection to the storm dragon since he knew that he could. He probed outward.
“Come,” he said, murmuring to the other dragons.
He hoped they would respond. Distantly, he had an awareness of them coming toward him. The ice dragon dropped from overhead, and the iron dragon slithered through the trees. More power was coming as well. The forest dragon.
He frowned. That was unusual. She never came.
Thunder rumbled distantly.
That wasn’t the forest dragon.
The storm dragon was coming. He could feel the energy crackling from it as he streaked toward them.
When they all appeared, they came to rest in the clearing nearby. All of those dragons were filled with power. There was something more, a new energy that swept toward him. There was something… incredible… to it.
Power built from the dragons, radiating out from them, mingling as it swirled between them.
“What are they doing?” Sarah asked.
Jason had no idea. He could feel the power that they were using and mingling, but he didn’t know if the other power that he felt was coming from them—or from the egg.
That was it.
He turned to William and Sarah. “I’m not so sure that you should be here for this,” he said.
“Why not?” Sarah asked.
“Because I don’t know what exactly is going to take place. I can feel something, but it is dangerous.”
Enough that it made him nervous. He could feel power building, trembling.
He looked over at the other dragons, and they watched him.
“I’ll find you when I’m certain,” he said to Sarah.
She held his gaze for a moment, then tapped on William’s arm. The two of them backed away.
“If you see any of the Dragon Guard, warn them that they should stay away from here.”
As they disappeared back into the trees, Jason turned his attention to the clearing. There was a building sense of energy that mingled within the dragons. That sense filled him, though it came from everywhere around him. There was a singular source emanating from it, a darkness that swirled around.
For a moment, Jason thought that was simply the illusion he’d formed, but as he headed forward, he realized the illusion had shattered. There was no more remaining. Whatever he saw now was not his illusion. It came from something else.
He moved forward slowly, holding his hands up. He could feel the power coming from the egg. It was different than before, but also the same.
The iron dragon nudged him gently, and he moved forward.
In the distance, on the far side of the clearing, the storm dragon remained a nebulous dark cloud, almost impossible to connect to, though he felt the energy radiating from him. It was similar to what he felt coming off the ice dragon and the iron dragon. Even the forest dragon radiated considerable power, pressing toward him.
All of them wanted him to move closer.
As he did, nearing the center of the clearing, Jason was aware of the egg. He could feel it, but with the darkness swirling around it, he couldn’t see it quite as well.
Jason reached for it.
A thunderous crack echoed.
Jason watched the egg. Darkness emanated from it, followed by a loud roar. Something slithered past him, slipping around him, and then the shadows twisted and twirled, brushing up against him.
With a sudden understanding, Jason realized what this was.
The dragon.
He held his hand out. Darkness as black as night worked around him, slipping around his arm, through him, before disappearing altogether. He glanced up, but the illusion of the moonlit sky was gone.
He thought he understood. The forest dragon had helped create her misfit. Darkness and night. With the thought, he knew it fit.
Jason smiled. “A night dragon.”
The other dragons roared.
