I lost track of which way I was traveling. The heat of the dragon burned within me, a heat that I connected to, something that bubbled up from deep within my core and sent my stomach roiling. It was a sensation that my father had once described to me.
Thinking of my father now brought a pang of sadness. If only he could have known what I had learned about myself. If only he had been given the opportunity to see what I might have become.
If only I had a chance to learn what my father knew of dragons.
I had thought his comments the ramblings of a delusional man, but now I wasn’t so sure. None in the Academy had heard of him, but my father had known the heat of dragons.
Those thoughts stayed with me as I followed the heat of this dragon.
This is what Jerith wanted from me. He wanted me to follow this energy, to see if there was anything I might learn from the dragon, and to discover how to open myself up to them. It still pulled upon me, drawing me deeper into the forest.
Could Jerith have wanted me to follow this far?
I had my doubts. I didn’t think this was part of the test, though maybe it was. Maybe this was all part of how they wanted me to prove that I deserved to stay within the Academy. I could feel the energy of the dragon, but they needed to know whether I was connected the way that I claimed.
Distantly, I heard another rumble. This came as a roar, a burst of the dragon crying out to me. I had stopped near a small stream, leaning down and taking a drink, and when the roar came, I paused, looking up and around me. I didn’t see anything, though the roar seemed as if the dragon were closer than he had been before.
That was strange.
Not only had the dragon roared, but it had seemed almost pained.
I probably wasn’t accurate in my interpretation of its sound, but the roar certainly had a feel to it. I took another step, going over the stream, and realized something.
The air had gone cooler.
That was odd, as well. Only a few paces away, the air within the forest had been humid, almost unpleasantly so, but the farther I came into the forest, the more everything had started to change, getting not only cooler, but also smelling differently.
I suspected that the change was more gradual than I had known, but could it be that I had traveled the wrong way? When I followed the dragon, I wondered how much of the heat had come off of the dragon himself and how much of it had come from something within the forest.
The energy of the dragon was out there, but it was far enough away that I felt as if I should just turn back. I wanted to prove myself within the Academy. I wanted to prove I could do what was asked of me. And I wanted to prove to myself that I belonged.
Something about the dragon continued to trouble and pull upon me. Why had it changed?
I didn’t think it was injured, at least I hoped not, but as I felt for the changing energy in the air, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps something had happened to it.
The sense of the dragon had shifted, no longer drawing upon me the way it had. A sharp crack caught my attention. I turned and looked toward the sound.
That had been close.
I moved near one of the tree trunks to hide. It might be nothing more than a deer, or possibly something even smaller, but I had enough experience to know that I needed to be careful, especially if it were something else.
I waited, but no other sounds came.
Distantly, I noticed the energy of the dragon, and it seemed as if it were farther from me than before. I opened myself to that power, thinking of the exercises I had learned within the Academy. One of them involved breathing slowly, in and out through my nose, to help center myself so that I could feel for the heat within the air and focus on the way the dragon power existed. As I did that now, I felt a faint surge of heat. It flickered within me, and then a surge of warmth worked along my skin, leaving me sweating. I wiped a hand across my brow for a moment before realizing the sudden movement might have been too much.
Freezing in place, I continue to focus on my breathing, then shift to another technique that they taught at the Academy to help open up to the dragons.
If I were to be a dragon mage, I would need to ensure I could stay open to that power. I had to find some way of connecting to it, drawing it through myself. There was a connection to the heat of my body, some part deep within me that roiled with that energy, connecting with the dragon. The sense of the dragon flared within me. It was closer now.
The dragon shouldn’t suddenly be that much closer to me than it had been before.
I relaxed everything within myself. That was the third lesson I was taught. The first was breathing, then the next was recognizing the heat within myself in order to connect to the dragon heat. The third was relaxation, opening myself to the connection of the dragons, so that once that connection was formed it would draw through me, give me a burst of power and energy, and flare up within me.
I felt it surge again.
Everything felt
