Dragon Skin, page 1
part #2 of Blood of the Ancients Series
DRAGON SKIN
Blood of the Ancients Book 2
DAN MICHAELSON
D.K. HOLMBERG
Copyright © 2022 by ASH Publishing
Cover art by Damonza.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Author’s Note
Series by Dan Michaelson
Similar Series by D.K. Holmberg
Chapter One
Only a few days passed since Rob gained a dragon forged body. While he’d learned some in that short time, he still wasn’t sure exactly what it could do. He was not as tired as he used to be. That much was clear in just how easy it was for him to navigate along the valley, walking with the others, who were far more powerful than him. But it was more than just that. He noticed there was something about the dragon forged body that changed his energy levels in a way he couldn’t comprehend.
He attempted to understand the cold working through him, starting in his belly and expanding, but he couldn’t make much sense of it. It was a part of him, and it no longer bothered him the way it had when he first felt it. It was a biting sort of cold, and as it washed over him and he felt the power flowing through him, Rob tried to understand whether there was any part of him he might be able to interact with differently.
The soft howl of a demarl called behind them, though Rob tried to ignore it. He’d been dealing the demarl howls for quite a while, and each time he heard the steady cry of the massive creature, he avoided looking behind him in every way possible, not wanting to hear or see anything that might cause problems.
Every time he heard a branch break, he spun. Every time he felt a strange stirring of warm air, he jumped a bit. He was in his valley, and he should be comfortable there. Only, he wasn’t.
Serena watched him, but she didn’t say anything. At one point, when one of the demarl dared to slip closer to them, she sent a streaming whip of golden power at it and the creature backed away once more. It howled, but then it fell silent.
Griffin stormed off into the trees and the sounds of the battle, the heavy snarling followed by yelps that ended with a whimper, filled the forest, all too close for his comfort.
“You look confused,” Serena said.
Rob glanced over at her. They were walking along the stream, something they tended to do over the previous few days, following the flow of water. Moving through the water seemed to help the pale blue sprite. It also offered a clear path, so they didn’t struggle to move through the trees and didn’t have to deal with any of the strange creatures that cropped up in the forest. Rob grew accustomed to the cold and the way the water felt as it worked through his boots.
“I’m just trying to understand my new body,” he said.
Griffin crouched next to the stream when he returned, dipping his hands in the water, cupping them to his face for a moment before taking a long sip. He looked in Rob’s direction, but he didn’t say anything. Griffin was often quiet over the last few days. From what Rob knew, Griffin wanted nothing more than to get Serena back to her kingdom, to her family, and to safety. Rob suspected any delay they took kept him from completing his assignment.
“It won’t take you long to fully understand it,” Serena said. “Most begin to understand how their bodies have been reforged when they start to work with it quickly.”
Rob glanced over at the sprite. She was humanoid in shape and stood up to his knee. She was splashing in the stream, and she looked up, almost as if she knew he was looking at her. She touched him every so often, giving a surge of cold that would wash through him. Even though he didn’t know if it was meant to connect him more thoroughly to his new dragon forged body, he suspected there was some aspect of it that mattered to the connection she formed.
“All I’ve known are people who have what you call stone forged dragon bodies,” he said.
“We don’t call it quite like that,” Serena said, “but we have something like it.”
“Would you just get on with it,” Griffin said. “Let the boy know what he needs to know and then we can get moving.”
“It’s not a matter of what he needs to know,” Serena said. “He’s ignorant.”
“I can’t help that I don’t know the same things you do,” Rob said. “But I’m not stupid.”
She drew herself up, and her body glowed the way it often did, her hair glimmering, catching the fading sunlight. Even her skin had a golden hue to it and seemed to flash a little more brightly. He suspected she was in control of the glowing, though she never confirmed it.
“I never said you were stupid. I said ignorant. They’re different things, you know.”
Rob shook his head. “I’m just trying to understand what it means for me to feel the power within me.”
“And?” she asked.
“Well, I’m trying to see if I can figure out what it means for me to feel a surge of cold. It seems to start deep within me and works outward.”
“That’s one of the very first steps of dragon forging,” Serena said. “Part of it is just a matter of feeling your dragon forging. Once you do, then you must learn how to control it. Eventually, you can work that dragon forging out and form dragon skin.”
The idea that Rob could form a dragon skin seemed impossible to him. He had only obtained his dragon forging recently, but since he knew there were other kinds of power available to him, other ways of dragon forging, he couldn’t help but hope he might progress.
Maybe he could become a dragon skin.
For so long, he had never even known what dragon forging would feel like, and since he felt it, he wondered how he might change. So far, other than feeling the essence within him, he didn’t feel any different. What would being a dragon skin be like?
“Is that what you do?” he asked.
She raised her hands, and the color surged along the skin. “What I do is a little different. My understanding of forging is unique. At least, compared to what you have, and what Griffin has.”
Rob looked over at Griffin standing next to a tree. Griffin didn’t often demonstrate his power, and though Rob knew he was a dragon heart, at least, he didn’t know what all he could do with it. He’d seen Serena using her abilities, and knew the power that she possessed, but Griffin was something else. His was like wind and fire, a different kind of dragon forging than Serena.
How many other different types of dragon forgings were there?
“But I feel the same essence within me,” Serena went on, almost as if what she said before didn’t matter. “And the more I hold on to that connection, the more I can feel it, and I can use it. You could too, if you come to understand what it means for you.”
“So, I have to feel the essence within me,” he said, struggling with referring to dragon forging that way. All his life, he’d called it firewater, as if it was a part of the dragon. His village knew it was tied to the dragon, as if the dragon themselves gifted them something. “And I need to use that to push it through me?” Rob continued.
“Exactly. You need to push it out from inside, deep within you, and let it flow. You’re changing yourself through it. You become more like a dragon as you do.”
“Some would say it’s the other way around,” Griffin said. “Some would claim that the dragon is taking over,” he went on, standing away from the tree. As he did, a hint of heat built from him, but it seemed to swirl, as if he were controlling it with wind. “That, over time, you become the dragon you’ve been borrowing essence from.”
“Oh, don’t go on like that,” Serena said. “You’re going to start sounding like some of the ancient ones.”
“What do they say?” Rob asked.
He figured he might as well try to understand as much as he could, especially as his understanding of what it meant to be dragon forged was so vastly different from theirs, and anything that he might learn from them would help him.
Serena looked at Rob. “Griffin believes we will one day take on dragon features. Maybe we can change into one of those massive, scaled beasts.” She smiled, laughing softly “The greater access we have to essence, the more we can control the essence within ourselves.” Serena looked over at Griffin. “That’s all it is, after all.”
“That’s all that you think it is,” he said.
She shook her head. “You don’t need to make it into something it’s not.”
Griffin regarded Serena for a moment, and Rob wondered what he was thinking. He wondered what Griffin was doing with his essence as well.
What must it be like to have as much essence as Griffin did?
“It’s time to keep moving. We have been here long enough and I’m ready to get you back home and be done with all of this.”
Serena glanced over
“I wasn’t wasting it saving you.”
“I think I would’ve been fine.”
Rob didn’t want the two of them to keep arguing, though he was curious about Griffin and what he’d been doing in his time in the valley—along with what he’d done before he’d come to the valley.
“Where will you go?” Rob asked.
“Away from the capital,” Griffin said.
“You know she’s not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” Serena said.
“My experience has been different from that,” Griffin said.
He wiped his hands on his pants and started off through the forest, following the stream.
Serena shook her head. “He’s been getting grumpier the further we go.”
“He doesn’t want to return?”
“It’s not so much that he doesn’t want to return’s that he wants to get rid of me so he can go off and do whatever he’s been doing.”
“What happened to him?” Rob asked, keeping his voice low.
Rob wasn’t sure how much he would upset Griffin by asking questions, but he was determined to find out more about the person he was traveling with.
He couldn’t return to his village. Well, he could, but Rob knew he was different from the others in his village, and increasingly, he felt he needed to see what the rest of the Dragon Queen’s kingdom looked like. It was time for him to see more of the world and understand his forging. Still, it was difficult.
Rob committed to leaving the valley. A part of him was tempted to return home, but if he did, he would have to answer questions about what happened to him, how he changed, and why he wasn’t staying. He didn’t want to answer those questions.
But it was more than just that.
Leaving was Rob’s way of trying to help those within the village, doing what his grandfather before him had done. It was his turn to protect his people, but he would do it differently. It didn’t involve protecting the valley border quite the same way the others had. It involved something else. It involved going beyond the border of the valley.
His people long believed the valley was all they could know. That beyond the border was far too much danger, far too much death. However, there he was, risking himself, taking a journey beyond. Rob glanced at Griffin’s back, watching him, wondering what the other man was thinking.
“He served my family for many years,” Serena went on, as if oblivious to Rob’s troubled thoughts. “For many years,” she said again. “He was one of our greatest fighters. And then…” She shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t entirely know what happened to him. Something changed. I don’t know if it’s something he experienced, something he lost, or if it had something to do with a disagreement he had with my mother.”
“The Dragon Queen,” Rob said.
Serena looked over at him and grinned. “Right. The Dragon Queen. I don’t know if Griffin was upset or not.”
“Would the two of you keep moving?” Griffin said. “I don’t want to be here any longer than we need to, and Rob doesn’t want to visit with any of his villagers, so we need to keep moving so we don’t encounter anybody from the outside.”
“You’ve already encountered people from the outside,” Rob said.
“You. Your grandmother. Nobody else.”
Rob looked over at Griffin. “You don’t even care about the essence in that pool?”
All the fighting over the essence pool, it seemed like a waste to leave it. How many lives had been lost because of that? It hadn’t helped Rob, but it had helped his grandmother. It brought her back. It might even help more of the people in his village.
Serena looked over at Rob. “Stone essence,” she said. “It’s not as useful. I don’t mean to disparage what your people have done and the essence they take on as their own. It’s just that stone essence isn’t usually very valuable. Well, it hasn’t always been valuable. Not until recently. To be honest, I’ve never seen a stone essence warrior use power quite like Vasin did. It’s probably best that we stopped him before he brought it back to the sect leader. If they managed to get a hold of that much stone essence, I can easily think of what they might want to do with it.”
She frowned, and there was a darkness that caught her face. “I suppose we should take them more seriously now. At least, we should take that essence more seriously now. I will have to share with my mother.”
“All of the dragon essences are important,” Griffin said.
“Some are more important than others,” Serena answered.
“Do you think one dragon is more powerful than another?” Rob asked.
“It’s not about different types of dragons. All fire essence comes from the same type of dragon. For all we know, it comes from the same dragon. Pure fire is the most potent.” Serena motioned to herself. “Me, my mother, my family, we all draw upon pure fire essence.”
“Which is why they think they should lead,” Griffin muttered.
She glowered at him. “We have pure fire. Others have a different essence. All of it is connected, though. That’s why my mother can rule.” Serena watched Griffin, as if daring him to challenge her.
What about Rob’s essence?
They were watching him, and he wondered why. His essence was cold.
“Anyway, once we learn what kind of essence you have, something rare most likely, then we can help you understand how to use it. At least, I suspect my mother will. She’s the keeper of such things, after all.”
“I’m not entirely sure what dragon form he has,” Griffin went on. “But it is unique. He was able to overpower the stone essence, whereas the two of us could not. I wonder what he could do to you,” Griffin said, nodding to Serena.
“I wasn’t able to overpower the stone essence,” Rob said hurriedly.
When they were trapped in the cave, with stone wrapping around his legs, he used the same flexing technique he did when he focused on that cold within him. It helped him, but even with that, he wasn’t entirely sure why or what it did.
“All I did was—”
“All you did was break free of stone. Not just any stone, but stone controlled by someone who was at least a dragon heart, but very possibly had dragon mind.”
Griffin shrugged, and he continued onward. Rob didn’t really understand the distinction between different stages of evolution, but they seemed to think he should.
“Don’t mind him,” she said. “He’s still unhappy about all of this.”
“Unhappy that you had come to the valley, or unhappy that he had to save you?”
“I think it’s both, but I think it’s more than that. I don’t know what prize my mother promised him, but it would have to have been significant for him to come after me.”
“If he’s getting a prize, why would he be upset?”
That didn’t make any sense to Rob. In his village, the prizes were the most important thing. When powerful beasts were dragged away from the border’s edge, the soldiers would feast on the meat—only those who were involved in the capture of the prize were given that opportunity—and it would strengthen them, helping with their dragon forging, making them something more. But with Griffin, Rob wondered if there was another explanation.
“What did she promise you?” Serena called to Griffin.
Rob glanced down at the sprite. She was still gliding through the stream, keeping up with them. From the way that she danced at times, she seemed amused by the conversation more than anything else.
They did nothing to keep their voices down, but they were far enough away from any of the villages, cutting through the heart of the forest, which was difficult for anyone but women and children to reach.
“She offered me dragon essence,” he said, his voice dropping off at the end.
Serena laughed and Rob frowned.
