What had I heard?
Something had jolted me awake.
I rolled over, looking up at the ceiling of the cave and rubbing my head.
Darkness.
Something about it didn’t feel right.
Why would it be so dark when there had been a glowing seal around the entrance to the cave?
I crawled forward. Had it been removed?
It would still be glowing if it were still there, but I didn’t see anything to suggest its presence. I separated a band, and created a burst of weak power that I whipped forward.
For a moment, I had a feeling the opening was no longer blocked, that I could crawl out, but the band of power rebounded off of something and came back toward me. I hurriedly pulled it back into myself, withdrawing the power so it didn’t strike me.
I still heard the thunderous sound outside of the cave. Whatever had triggered it left me thinking that something was taking place within the city, or at least near the Academy. Whatever sound had exploded near us was potentially dangerous.
I crawled toward the entrance to the cave, feeling my way forward in the darkness. I pressed out a tight band of power, little more than a thin stream of energy I stretched from one hand to the next, and it created a burst of power that arced between my hands, sizzling in the air.
This one was different.
Something was going on. The explosion was loud enough so that I knew something was taking place. But what? I tried looking out into the darkness, seeing nothing but more darkness.
Releasing the band of power between my hands, I waited for my eyes to adjust, trying to stare out into the night. There was no moonlight, or if there was, clouds had obstructed it. I found myself searching for what I had heard, but couldn’t come up with the answer.
Nothing in the garden seemed to be moving. There were no shifting shadows. No rustling of leaves. No stirring of wind, even. Everything was still.
Within that stillness, I felt something off.
A drawing sensation.
It was strange, potent, but it was something I had felt before—and recently.
Vard.
Though it didn’t have to be Vard.
There were others who had targeted the city before.
But what I felt, the strange pulling on me, reminded me of the Vard.
The Vard hadn’t been responsible for the attacks in the past. Why attack now if they hadn’t in the past? Unless they knew that the Servant was missing and the king was responsible.
How could they have reached the capital though?
There should have been other layers of defenses—dragons, dragon mages, and others who would have prevented them from reaching the city.
I needed to get out of here.
The longer I sat here, the more I felt that strange pulling sensation I had felt when I was with Thomas out on the Vard lands. Whatever was out there was calling on enough power that it drew on me.
It was potent.
I cycled through the dragons, feeling for them, testing whether there was anything within that connection I might be able to use, especially something I could use to alert them. If there were danger, I wanted to notify the dragons of it, mostly so they didn’t end up suffering under an attack.
I felt nothing.
I continued trying to call upon the dragons. The energy was there, and I continued cycling it. I could feel the power as it flowed out from me, through the dragons, and back, but even within that, I detected something different. I felt the power pulling on me, some aspect of it that attempted to draw off of the dragons.
Another explosion thundered, this one somewhere nearby; it was distant enough that I couldn’t tell where it was, though close enough that I could feel its effect.
I had to get out of here.
It wasn’t only for my safety now. If I stayed trapped here, I feared what would happen to the dragons. If the Vard appeared, they could attack them, they could use their strange power to drain the energy of the dragons.
I was not willing to sit idly by and wait.
I had to do something.
I approached the barrier. I had already tried to disable it, had already tried to overpower it, and had failed at both. I might be able to blast my way through the stone around it, but even if I did, there was no guarantee it would be effective. It was possible—and probable—that it had been fortified with the same sort of power as other places around the Academy.
Worse, if I did target the stone, there was a very real possibility that I might end up with the tunnel collapsing around me. The only way out was either through this opening, or by finding my way through that narrow tunnel I hadn’t dared crawl too far along.
The thought of doing that again, crawling through the darkness, risking myself as I slithered along the tunnel, left me trembling just a little bit.
That wasn’t going to be the way out.
Which meant I had to somehow remove this protection, but how?
The only way someone could do so would be to have the same connection to the dragon. That was the key. If the dragon were involved, the power could be returned. Otherwise, the barrier would stay.
I frowned, but I thought could try that.
I had been around Eleanor enough to know the feeling of the dragon she had connected to. It struck me as something similar to what I might use. It was possible I could draw upon that energy, that I could call upon it and cycle the power out of the barrier and back into the dragon.
Unfortunately, it might involve putting that dragon into the cycle with the others.
I wasn’t sure whether that was safe. When I had added dragons to the cycle before, it had been with the other dragons’ approval. In this case, I had no idea if the other dragons would approve of me attempting to do something like that, if they would resist it, but I felt I had to try.
I closed my eyes, focusing on the energy of the barrier here. It was imbued with a distinct sense of the dragon from which it came.
Distinct enough that I recognized which dragon Eleanor had used. It was one of the dragons within the dragon pen, and that dragon was still there now.
If only I had some way of communicating with the other dragons, reaching them to question whether this was something that would be allowed, but I had to trust they would understand. What choice would they have given my captivity?
I imagined myself in the dragon pen. That step probably wasn’t necessary, especially since I could feel the energy coming off of the dragon, and could feel the power there. I might even be able to just connect to the dragon.
There was a possibility I didn’t have to add it to the cycle.
I hadn’t tried reaching for any other dragons since I had started to cycle their power. It stayed with me constantly, and I didn’t know if I could even separate from it anymore. It was possible that any dragon I reached for would join the cycle, regardless of whether I wanted it to.
I focused. In doing so, I thought about the power that was out there, the dragon and the dragon pen, and about his deep maroon scales, the energy that flowed within him. As I focused on that, I attempted to connect to the dragon.
It forced me to reach back to the earliest lessons I had, some of the earliest instructions that the teachers at the Academy had given me. I thought about how I had to focus on my breathing, calming myself. With my heart racing the way it was—fear within me coursing, wondering whether there was a dangerous attack on the Academy—that step was more difficult than usual. Once that was accomplished, I tried something different. I started to think about the burning within me. With the cycle of dragons, that burning was there constantly, a companion I had come to know quite well. I held on to that energy, feeling it flowing through me, and then moved on to attempting to relax. That part was a bit more difficult. I used the energy of this new dragon, but as soon as I reached for it, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to do it alone.
As I had suspected. My connection to the other dragons, the bond that had formed between us through
the cycle, had changed something for me. Which meant I had to add this dragon to the cycle if I wanted to escape.
I pushed out a pulsing sense through the cycle, alerting the other dragons as much as I could. I had no idea if it would even make a difference. Surprisingly, there came a pulsing in response. I had felt something similar when I had joined other dragons to the cycle. This came from the green dragon. He approved.
Knowing that, I latched on to the power and pulled it into me, then sent it outward, joining the dragon into the cycle.
There came a soft burst of energy that flowed through me as the cycle intensified, more power suddenly flowing, but then it faded as the dragon joined the cycle.
I breathed out a sigh of relief and reached for the barrier. If this worked, then I should be able to pull that power off and send it into the cycle, back into the dragon that had helped form it.
If it worked.
I focused on that power, starting to pull upon it.
It came to me, though it did so slowly.
Gradually, I could feel it unraveling.
As I thought, there were multiple strands involved. More than I had known before—at least four, possibly five. It left me surprised, though not entirely shocked, that she had hidden that from me.
It surprised me she had the ability to conceal that power as well as she had, but it also surprised me she had woven it so quickly, and so tightly, that I hadn’t even known she had done it.
I pulled that power back into the cycle, and the cave finally released me.
I crawled out into the darkness, into the night, and took a deep breath.
Nothing moved in the garden. It was quiet, calm, and though there had been that explosion, and the feeling of power that was out there, there was also a feeling of stillness to the air—almost as if the city had no idea what it might have to deal with.
Perhaps it did not. How could it, especially when I didn’t even know what it would have to deal with?
I could still feel the drawing of power around me, energy that attempted to pull upon me, but I couldn’t tell where it came from or what it meant, only that it had a strange, troublesome familiarity to it.
It was different from what I felt when I was pulling upon power, and different even from the cycle that I had control over. With this awareness, I recognized some hint of energy, some aspect that I needed to try to focus upon, if only so I could better control it and prevent it from striking me.
Energy from the cycle of the dragons filled me, and I continued to let it flow outward, circling through. Many of the dragons that were a part of the cycle were far from the city, though there were several within the dragon pen.
I needed to go to them, needed to know what was taking place.
I hurried out of the garden and reached the main part of the Academy building, then paused. The building was darkened. From the outside, it didn’t look as if any lanterns were even lit, no sign of anyone active inside.
That troubled me, though perhaps it should not. It was late enough, at least I thought it was. It might be that those within the Academy were resting. I didn’t know what I had detected, only that there was some strange energy, and enough of an unusual feeling in that energy that I couldn’t help but think someone within the Academy was responsible.
Another betrayal.
Who could have done it this time?
I could go through the Academy itself, but decided against it. Instead, I looped around, jogging quickly, focusing on what I had detected before, more than a bit worried that it was still out there. Even as I felt for it, I couldn’t tell whether it was something to fear.
As I neared the edge of the buildings, another explosion suddenly thundered.
It wasn’t something I heard, but something I felt. It came from deep within me.
Heat and fire, power that built, left me unsettled. It was different from what I had felt around the Servant. Even if this were the Vard, it didn’t feel the same as it had when we had been chasing that danger. Still, I had to be ready.
I rounded the side of the Academy and still saw nothing.
I jogged toward the dragon pens in the distance, feeling the energy coming off of them and the cycle of fire coming off of the dragons. That power coursed through me, and it filled me with enough energy that I could detect the movement.
A little farther.
Another explosion.
I stopped running and turned off to the distance, looking toward the forest, as that was where it came from. The energy was out in the forest, out in the trees, and it radiated toward me.
What was it though?
Maybe I was wrong. The Vard wouldn’t be out in the forest. There was the strangeness I had detected out in the forest earlier. The same strangeness Manuel had been trying to understand, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it. That had been real.
What if it were both the Vard and this other threat?
They would attack in a different way. They would target the city. Anything in the forest was the Djarn.
I started toward it, feeling for the surging of heat, aware of that energy, but not sure if there was anything I could do about it. All I could tell was that the power continued to build.
I needed to head into the forest to investigate.
But I didn’t have to do it alone.
I needed to get to the dragons. I could take the green dragon, and we could fly. It would be the first time I went on my own, but I felt it necessary to do. At this point, what other choice did I have but to go and investigate?
I looked back to the Academy. There were plenty of other choices I could make, but without Thomas here, I wasn’t sure what else to do. He’d restricted knowledge of the attack on the city, sharing it with only a few others. That made it difficult for me to go and get any sort of help. It made it difficult for me to know who I could go to for help.
I waited another moment, but another surge of power didn’t come, so I turned and jogged toward the dragon pen. When I neared it, I smiled at the dragons. I could see the green dragon curled up in the middle of the pen, resting. When I approached, he looked up, as if he knew I was coming, which made sense given the dragon’s central position within the cycle. I nodded to him, keeping my attention on him, and approached carefully.
“We need to go and investigate,” I said.
I stepped into the pen, and realized I wasn’t alone.
There was another darkened shape inside.
I hesitated, hurriedly reaching for power. It might only be another instructor. Certainly, I wasn’t the only one who had detected something happening out in the forest.
The person turned toward me. They had a hood over their head, and I could make out nothing else in the darkness. I wrapped power outward, looping it for a moment, and sent it sweeping toward this other person. When I did, I could feel something change.
“Natalie,” I said.
She pulled the hood of her cloak back, then looked over to me, nodding. “Ashan. I didn’t realize you were here.”
“What are you doing with the dragons?” I asked.
She stood next to one of the dragons—and it took me a moment to realize it was the dragon that had been used to form the barrier around the cave. Now that he was a part of the cycle, I was fully aware of the dragon himself, aware of how that power flowed out from him, and I could feel something within it.
“I came out here when I detected something,” she said. She eyed me strangely, cocking her head to the side and frowning. “And it was probably the same thing you did.”
I shook my head. “I don’t even know what I detected.”
There had been the explosions, but now that I was out here, I didn’t see where they had been. When I’d been in the tunnel, I had felt it. I was certain of it.
I hurriedly cycled power through the dragons.
There was nothing nearby. The dragons would have alerted me.
Which meant it wasn’t close, but still near enough that I had picked up on it withi
n the cycle. I approached the green dragon, holding my hand out for him, and he lifted his head, locking eyes with me before swiveling so he could look at Natalie.
“I think you do,” she said.
I didn’t really know. It might be the Vard, but it might be something else.
As I watched her, I couldn’t help but feel as if she wouldn’t believe me.
“Maybe it’s the Vard,” I said softly.
She nodded. “They’ve been moving.”
“Toward the city?” Even as I said it, I didn’t think that was quite right. If the Vard had been attacking the city, I didn’t think I’d detect them the way I had. I didn’t think they would detect them where I did. Whatever else was happening, it was away from the city, away from us here, someplace else.
She shook her head. “Not in the city.”
“Then it’s the forest.”
“That is my fear,” she said.
“Do you think they’re attacking your people?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know. It’s possible they are.”
“But you don’t know.”
She shook her head again, running her hand along the dragon’s side, as if she were trying to connect to it.
“This isn’t something you should be a part of, Ashan.”
“Not you, too,” I said.
She frowned at me. “What does that mean?”
“What it means is that I have been getting something similar from Thomas and Manuel. None of them want me involved in what’s taking place in the city. They both think this is all about the Vard, but I can’t shake my experience. It hasn’t been the Vard so far. There has been something else, and I feel like they are so focused on the Vard as the only possible answer that they have been overlooking the real answer.”
“They are nothing like you could imagine,” she said softly.
The way she said it suggested she had a more intimate knowledge of the Vard than I had expected.
“You know them,” I said.
She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I know them. I’ve encountered them before.” She flicked her gaze over to the forest before turning her attention back to me. In the time we’d been standing and talking, there had been no other sense from the forest, nothing to suggest there was another attack. No other thunderous explosions, no pulling upon fire and power—nothing.
The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3) Page 18
