“Here?” I asked the dragon. “This is where you came in?”
The dragon roared again.
“There isn’t anything here but a wall. I don’t know how to get you out of here.”
The dragon pushed a hint of power through me. I could feel it cycling, sending a stirring of energy up from the buried place within me. It was as if the dragon wanted me to know something, and it was the only way he had of communicating that with me.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
The dragon pushed out again, another surge of energy flowing.
Within that surge of power, I could feel an urgency within the dragon.
A voice came from behind me. It was muted and quiet, but close enough that I knew if I stood here for too much longer, I’d end up getting caught by whomever it was. Maybe it was Jerith, or perhaps his co-conspirator. Either way, I didn’t want to remain here and be trapped by them; I wanted to get away somehow, before they caught up to me.
I pushed out on the connection to the dragon, hoping for some understanding as the energy flowed between us, but there was no understanding. There was only the power that flowed outward. It stretched from this dragon, to the green dragon, to the golden-scaled dragon—a circle of power.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
The dragon surged heat again. This time, it burst toward me, coming with a bit of intensity. The dragon looked at me, and there was something in his dragon gaze that suggested I should understand him. It suggested frustration I didn’t comprehend, and it suggested an urgency with which I needed to act.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell what more I needed to do.
I heard the voice again.
We’d gone all the way down the hallway, so whoever was coming might reach the room and realize the dragon was gone; we would then end up either fighting our way out or being captured by whoever was coming toward us.
The dragon roared softly.
“No,” I whispered. “We have to be quiet. We can’t let them know we are out of the other room.”
The dragon sent another hint of surging power outward.
Thomas. I needed to find him. He was involved in trying to understand what had happened to the missing dragons, and he was convinced the Djarn were involved. I had denied him, and had ignored him when he’d asked for help, which maybe was a mistake. In hindsight, I should have known better and should have trusted him. He was the king’s chief dragon mage, after all.
The dragon seemed to believe there was some way out here. Maybe there was some hidden entrance, some way for us to escape.
The voice sounded closer.
I clutched the metal vase up against my chest, holding on to it, and could feel the power stored within it—it circled from the dragons and into the vase where it was stored.
There was a soft scraping sound along the hallway.
I turned back to the dragon. “How did you come through here?”
The dragon breathed out, a stream of flame streaking from his nostrils, but nothing more. Heat surged within him. It was subtle, but as it burst outward, I could feel just how he used that heat to connect to me and the other dragons.
I had to find a way to hold back the others coming toward us. Did I dare use something to prevent them from getting through here?
I pulled on the power, suppressing it deeply, and began to send spirals of flame out. They knew I was here, along with the dragon, so there was no point in maintaining any semblance of secrecy. I sent spirals streaking away from me, streamering toward the wall behind me, and looped them together, forming a pattern. It was more complicated than anything that I had tried before, but necessity forced me to attempt something new. As I bound that fire to the wall, I created a crisscrossing weave that would hopefully prevent Jerith and his accomplice from getting too close to me before I was ready for them.
I pushed that power out, and found that the other dragons helped in some way. They added a layer of power to what I was doing, and the combined effort allowed me to hold the power much easier than I would’ve been able to otherwise.
It bought me time.
I turned to the dragon, holding my hand out. He held my gaze, and in that moment, I couldn’t help but feel as if there was some understanding that passed between us. “I need you to help me find my way out of here,” I said to the dragon. “Help me figure out how they brought you in so that we can backtrack and go out,” I said.
There came a faint surge from the dragon.
Still, the power was pouring out of the dragon and into the metal vase, flowing in a way that suggested to me the dragon was not completely freed of that influence. Whatever the Djarn had done, whatever connection they formed between the dragon and the vase, had put this dragon in danger.
The dragon roared softly.
“You’re not helping,” I said.
I opened myself to the energy of the dragons, feeling for the way power cycled through the others, through me, and felt a shift. Accompanying it was a strange fluttering nearby.
A section of the wall was a little bit different. Darker, perhaps.
I pressed my hand up against it and felt a distant surge probe through me from what I assumed was the green dragon. Then I realized that the green dragon was only a conduit—this surge came from the yellow-scaled dragon in the forest.
It was as if the yellow-scaled dragon knew exactly what this was and what to do. The power flowed out of me, slamming into the wall, forming a pattern of circles along its surface; power spooled into the pattern until it
