Mist dragon, p.10
Mist Dragon, page 10
part #5 of Dragon Misfits Series
A dragon.
As Jason focused on the dragon, he couldn’t tell what kind of dragon it was. It wasn’t any sort of dragon they were accustomed to finding.
Could Lorren have found a misfit?
He’d mentioned the misfits, but Jason thought the ice dragon would have said something had he found another. As Jason followed the sense, energy continued to build. He looked around but didn’t see anything.
“Are you there?” he whispered.
He squeezed the iron dragon glove, feeling the pressure of the dragon within his hand and the surge of awareness that flowed between them. By holding onto that awareness, he could feel the energy building within him, the connection forming, the bond that existed between them suddenly solidifying.
“I’m here,” the iron dragon said, the connection forming within his mind.
“There’s another one here. I need you to help me know where they are.”
Sarah frowned at him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m talking to the iron dragon,” he said.
“You can do that even when he’s not here?”
“I’m connected,” he said, holding his hand out to show her the iron dragon glove. The glove covered his hand, the metal always warm, though not unpleasantly so. He had grown accustomed to having its presence on his hand, along with the connection that it permitted him to share with the iron dragon.
As he watched Lorren, he noticed a stiffness that made Jason wonder if he detected what Jason was doing, possibly even an awareness of how he communicated with the iron dragon. He ignored that feeling, focusing instead on the energy of the iron dragon as he followed Lorren. The iron dragon had been off a ways, though not so far that he would not have been able to return were Jason to need him.
“There is something,” the iron dragon rumbled within his mind.
“I don’t see it, though I feel it,” Jason said.
“Similar to the storm?”
Jason didn’t think so. With the storm dragon, there had been the rumbling and the thunder and the chaos of the storm clouds that fueled him. This was something else. As Jason looked around, he couldn’t make out what it was, but he felt confident it was another dragon misfit.
A faint mist swirled around the trees.
Jason had seen a mist within the forest before, and given the humidity of this place, he wasn’t altogether surprised, but there was something unusual here. He stopped near one of the trees with traces of mist swirling around it and leaned down. There was something almost tangible about the mist. He focused on it, taking a deep breath. As he breathed in, that moisture flowed through him, and something constricted. He coughed, trying to push it out, but couldn’t.
Panic set in, only for a moment.
He embraced the power of the ice and the iron dragon, letting that magic flow through him. Together, the two dragons created a healing wave of energy that worked through him. It dispelled the mist.
He straightened, looking at Lorren. “What are your intentions here?”
Lorren watched him. “I told you to follow.”
Jason shook his head. “No.” He motioned to Henry to halt and noticed him reaching into his pocket, grabbing for dragon pearls. At least Henry would be prepared. Cherise and Olar paused, looking from Jason to Lorren, a question in Cherise’s eyes. When she turned her attention to Lorren, hatred still burned there.
Sarah stopped behind him, hesitating for a moment, staying close, but Jason could feel the power she was pulling and recognized her concern as well.
“What is it?” Henry whispered.
Jason stared at the mist swirling around the trees before turning his attention back to Lorren. “I’ve been feeling something for a little while now.” He nodded to Lorren. “He has an arrogance about his power and what he claims we should detect. We’re overlooking something.”
Lorren watched him. They didn’t have all the answers about him, which bothered Jason. He had come because he claimed to have a misfit he wanted to show Jason. Wasn’t that it?
Why bring them out here?
Unless that was where the misfit hid.
“There’s energy within the trees,” Jason said. “I can feel it.”
“I should hope so,” Lorren said. “Seeing as how you are supposed to be the great dragon expert.”
Jason looked around, ignoring Lorren. “It’s the mist,” he said, nodding to Cherise and Olar. They were near a tree where the mist swirled. “It’s not natural. Stay away from it, and don’t breathe it in. If you do, it seems to be controlled by something.” He nodded to Lorren, keeping his gaze on him. “I suspect it’s his dragon.”
Henry frowned. “You’re saying he has a mist dragon?”
“I don’t know. Whatever he has possesses the ability to control it.”
“Very good,” Lorren said, turning toward Jason.
The mist began to swirl around him, filling the space in between the trees, sneaking through the area. It moved rapidly, spinning. The mist dragon reminded him of the storm dragon in a way. The agitation. The power. Could Lorren have been responsible for the storm dragon, and not Therin?
Jason prepared his power, holding on to the energy from the iron dragon along with the ice dragon. He also readied for the possibility that he might need to create an illusion. He could tilt reality enough to control things, shifting the nature of what everyone saw around him. When it came to Lorren, Jason thought he needed to be prepared for doing something like that now.
“What is your intention?” Jason looked around him, noting the mist continuing to build. “There are a handful of Dragon Guard in the trees. You won’t be able to harm Cherise and Olar.”
Lorren smiled. “And then there’s you.” He took a step forward, and the mist started to swirl with him. “A man who claims power. A man who has connected to lost dragons,” he said, tipping his head as he taunted him. “A man who claims he can rescue dragons from Dragon Souls and can bring them back rather than needing to destroy those that have been tormented.”
“I can rescue them. If you are familiar with the dragons, you have seen what I can do.”
Lorren snorted. “I have seen what you can do. And I have felt it. Do you think what you do has no repercussions?”
Jason glanced over at Sarah for a moment before turning his attention back to Lorren. “We do what is necessary to free the dragons.” Sarah clutched her dragon pearl, and he could feel her calling upon the power within it, prepared to use it.
“You probably did not recognize the consequences of your actions. You have put more than just your dragons into danger. All dragons are in danger with what you do. Lorach was content with their stretch of land. Or had been. Now they look elsewhere. Now they move when they had been quiet. Now dragons suffer—truly free dragons and not those you claim to have freed—that would not have. The Dragon Guard managed to keep Lorach confined, which was enough. Until you.” He watched Jason. “Now I have to finish what you cannot.”
The mist continued to swirl, and a shape was taking form within it.
A dragon. It was a misfit.
The iron dragon neared. Jason could feel him and quietly urged him to stay hidden. If nothing else, he wanted to have the iron dragon ready to act if necessary, but he didn’t want to target the mist dragon.
Jason focused on the energy of the ice and the iron dragon, combining that power, and poured it toward the mist dragon.
It faded.
This dragon seemed to have a natural immunity to Jason’s abilities.
How would that happen?
There shouldn’t be any way for the dragons to ignore the power he used.
How could he overpower them?
He altered his approach. Using the forest dragon, he tilted reality just enough to solidify the mist dragon, then added his connection to the iron and ice dragons, bonding the two in a way that permitted him to focus that power. The energy struck the mist dragon, but then it slipped away, tendrils of it fading, slipping from the dragon.
Lorren watched him. With a wave of his hand, the mist dispersed, as did Jason’s power. He lost control over the illusion, along with his connection to the iron and ice dragon.
Sarah gasped. Jason suspected she had lost her connection to the dragon pearl as well.
He was powerful. Not only that, but the dragon was powerful.
Lorren turned to Jason, the mist swirling around him. “You thought you were the only one who had connected to the so-called misfits. Unfortunately, you were mistaken.”
With that, the mist streaked toward him.
9
J ason backed away. The iron dragon might be getting closer to him, but he reached for his connection to the ice dragon. He could feel the ice dragon flying high overhead, drifting within the upper atmosphere, the cold calling to it. He borrowed that cold, and with a surge, he summoned ice lightning. It was the only energy he thought might be able to counter Lorren.
Jason braced himself for the eruption of energy. When it slammed into the ground, he felt it crash toward the mist dragon. The ice lightning crackled around the mist dragon, and it solidified it. Surrounded by an ice ball, the dragon could no longer move.
Jason held out his iron dragon hand, the heat already beginning to radiate.
“What are you doing?” Jason demanded.
“I intend to see what your dragons are capable of.” Lorren backed away, and the mist continued to swirl.
He looked around, the power from his connected dragons filling him. “Try that again, and you will see what I will do to protect my dragons and me,” Jason said, turning to Lorren. Heat radiated off him. In the distance, he could feel the iron dragon slithering closer.
Lorren started laughing. It was a wild and crazed sound, but he grinned as he turned to Jason. “Lovely,” he said. With a wave of his hand, mist started to swirl from him.
Jason embraced the ice dragon, and he froze it. “What are you doing? If you oppose the Dragon Souls, then we can work together.”
Lorren turned toward the mist dragon and focused on it. There was a strange glowing sense, almost a pulsing that came from within the ice ball that surrounded the mist dragon. Jason summoned the power of the ice dragon again, and another bolt of ice lightning streaked down from the sky, crashing into the mist dragon. Another layer of ice surrounded the mist dragon.
The others around the forest remained quiet, staying off to the side. Sarah clutched a dragon pearl, but her parents simply watched, their gaze focused on Jason before darting to Lorren. No one acted against him, though. They waited for Jason to do so.
And these were the people who would have the Dragon Guard act against Lorach?
They couldn’t even act against somebody in their own city.
“Keep an eye out for anything else,” he whispered, warning the ice dragon.
If this man was willing to attack them in Dragon Haven, he worried it might be a distraction, a ruse to try to come at them from a different angle.
He shifted his focus to the energy of the forest dragon. If she were willing to come, then perhaps she would be able to help this dragon, the same way that she had helped the storm dragon.
He turned to Lorren. “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “I felt what you were doing to me.”
“What I did to you or what you did to yourself? I believe you were the one who attacked this dragon. I could’ve warned you that was a mistake.”
“We both want the same thing. We both want to stop Lorach.”
Jason called upon another ice lightning bolt, and it slammed down from high overhead, crashing into the mist dragon, adding yet another layer.
Within that ice ball, the mist dragon continued to pulse, and there came a steady energy pushing against what Jason held onto. In time, he suspected he wouldn’t be able to maintain his connection to this dragon. Eventually, it would fade, and the dragon would escape. Strange, considering that mist was water and the ice dragon had control over water.
Unless there was something more to the mist than he understood.
Could this not even be a mist dragon? He thought about the river, the spray, the way the water had swirled. Could it be the river dragon?
He’d seen the egg. He thought he understood the power that dragon would have. That meant this wasn’t the river dragon. He didn’t know which dragon it was, whether it was mist or not, but he believed that it had been hatched for longer than the other misfits.
The stories about Lorren made sense. How he’d disappeared. How he attacked Lorach. Even how he had killed Dragon Souls. All of it fit. “You hatched a dragon misfit long before these others,” Jason said, realizing the truth.
Lorren stared at him.
Jason took a step toward him, still holding the power of the ice and the iron dragon. He was readying to use the power of the forest dragon, though with the power Lorren had over the mist, and the control he had with it, he couldn’t help but wonder if he had some way to dismiss that power.
The mist was the key. There was something about it that felt… different.
More than how it was not one of the misfit hatch mates. It felt foreign in a way Jason had never felt from dragon misfits before. The energy in it was off—and painful.
Lorren needed Jason for something. That was what he said.
Was it the connection he shared with the misfits?
A different idea came to him. “Were you the one who taught Therin?”
Lorren’s face clouded. “He abused my trust.”
The power of the mist continued to swirl from him, and he could feel the dragon attempting to struggle against the way that he was held, but Jason maintained his connection to the ice dragon. With the ice dragon flying as high overhead as he was, connected to the biting cold, he had almost infinite stores of power. Jason served as a conduit, little more than that, but he could add his own touch to it.
“Why did you come here?” Jason asked.
“Because I needed to see if the rumors were true about you. I needed to know if you trained these dragons.”
Jason swept his gaze around him briefly. The iron dragon was just out of eyesight, behind the trees. He could feel him, though. “I haven’t trained anything. I’m connected to the dragons and use that connection to free them.”
“What about that,” Lorren asked, nodding to Jason’s hand.
Jason raised his iron glove. “This was a dragon pearl that formed around my hand. It’s much like the other dragon pearls I’ve been granted.”
“You’ve been granted them?”
“The other misfits granted me a connection to their power.”
Lorren watched him for a long moment. There came a pressure in the air, and Jason readied for a possible attack. A hint of a smile curved Lorren’s lips. “I believe you.”
With that, he waved his hand again, and the mist shattered the ice surrounding the dragon. The mist dragon suddenly swirled out.
Jason readied another ice lightning strike, feeling power building from behind him from the other Dragon Guard. The iron dragon was there, readying to attack, and even somewhere overhead, he could feel the ice dragon preparing to descend.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t feel the forest dragon. That was simply how she worked. She wouldn’t reveal her presence unless absolutely necessary.
There was no attack. The mist swirled and then retreated, backing away.
Lorren watched him.
“What are you going to do?” Jason asked.
“I had to know whether or not you forced the connection. Given everything I’d heard about you, it seemed almost impossible to believe. And then there were these dragons. They seemed freed, but I couldn’t be sure whether or not they truly were freed. With Lorach moving, I knew I had to take action.”
“I’ve done whatever I can to ensure their safety.”
“Interesting,” Lorren said. “If what you’ve done is effective, I no longer need to slaughter them.”
“You shouldn’t have slaughtered them in the first place,” Jason said.
“It was a mercy. Trust me when I tell you the dragons do not care.”
There was a dark streak of cruelty within Lorren. How could he think that the dragons wouldn’t care about being slaughtered? But there was what the ice dragon had said to him, a practicality that suggested he wasn’t wrong about it.
Lorren glanced over at the mist dragon. Something passed between them. Jason could feel it. The dragon disappeared, fading into the forest, as if settling out like mist flowing around the trees.
“I have seen what I need. Now it’s time for us to talk. There is much we can offer each other.”
They weren’t that dissimilar. Lorren was a misfit, just like Jason. He might take a more dangerous approach to the dragons, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t work together. “Just like that?”
He glanced at the trees. “You can tell the ten Dragon Guards they can follow us back to the city.”
Jason looked over at Henry. “There were ten?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t the one who deployed them.”
Lorren turned and started marching back to the forest, heading back the way they’d come.
Jason had no choice but to follow. He didn’t know how to even react. The ice hadn’t stopped Lorren. It had done nothing. Lorren had been too powerful for Jason. He marveled at the power of that dragon, the way Lorren could use it, and he marveled at the energy within him.
They marched quickly back toward the city, and when they passed through the border of the forest, the iron dragon was there, slithering toward the clearing and watching all the way. High overhead, Jason was aware of the ice dragon, swirling, power pulsing out from him.
Other dragons were there.
Jason wondered how they had been alerted, though he suspected that the Dragon Guards had somehow managed to do so. Perhaps Henry had a hand in that as well, though Jason wasn’t sure whether he could trigger a warning to them. As they headed through the streets, the dragons followed. Lorren never looked up, though Jason suspected Lorren was utterly aware of the dragons and chose to ignore them.
