If only he had some way of using the forest dragon’s magic.
He took a seat, resting his elbows on his thighs, and held the leaf in his hand. As he did, he tried to think about the power of the forest dragon. He didn’t know nearly as much about her or her power as he did about the other dragons, but as he held on to the leaf, he thought he could feel the energy flowing through it.
The key was accessing it.
It was the same trouble he’d had when it came to the iron dragon. It had taken him time to understand anger and rage, and only then had he been able to find enough of a connection to the iron dragon to send that power through it.
Unlike the ice dragon, where the power seemed to flow within Jason, where it was a part of him, the iron dragon had only become bonded to him because of the shifting nature of the dragon pearl and the way that it flowed across his hand. Without that, Jason doubted that he would have the same connection to the dragon.
He breathed out. There had to be some way to understand the forest dragon. Comprehending that connection would be the real challenge, but if he was trapped here, there was nothing else to do. He had no idea how long they were going to keep him here, or what they would do next, and if they came after him again, if one of the Dragon Souls decided to challenge him, then what could he do other than what he was already doing?
He held on to his connection to the dragon pearl and traced his fingers over the surface of it. With his eyes closed, he thought about the forest dragon. He could almost see her in his mind. Her deep green eyes glowed there, welcoming him. The strange shifting colors along her skin, the way her scales fluttered, taking on the aspect of the forest, called to him, drawing his attention.
And he remembered how that had felt.
It was something like the wind fluttering through the trees, shifting the leaves.
Jason swayed in place. He let that sense fill him. It was a memory, but there was something about the memory that felt right. And the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that he could find something about the forest dragon that would help him to learn what he needed.
The more that he focused on the memory of the forest dragon, the more he began to wonder if that was the key. The forest dragon created illusion, but what was the illusion? It was that she had been in the tree. It was that she masked herself. And it had been an illusion that she couldn’t speak to him.
She had used the shifting of the colors along her scales in order for him to know that she had understood him. It was his issue that he hadn’t understood her. If he could find some way of knowing what she was trying to tell him, then perhaps he might be able to gain even more understanding. He might be able to use that in order to reach for the power he could feel from the leaf.
And it wasn’t just the leaf.
As he sat there, swaying in place, Jason realized that the power had come from another place.
It was from the wind. It was from the shifting of the scales. It was from her forcing that change upon him.
The illusion wasn’t just her appearance. The illusion was affecting him as well. When he had tried to look for Sarah and Henry in the forest around him, even searching for the iron dragon, he had been unable to find them. The illusion had masked all of them from him.
That would be a useful power if he could understand how to use it, but without having her to communicate with, how could he do that?
The better question might be, did he even need to speak to her?
With the leaf, he had some way of reaching out to her. He was able to draw upon that and feel the magic.
As he swayed in place, that sense of power rolled through him, and he knew the source of it. It was not just in his imagination. It was not just the way the trees moved, though that had been part of her illusion as well. That had been her way of trying to mask her actions, the way that she had held on to power, shielding him from knowing just what she was doing.
And that illusion was strong enough that he had to believe that there would be some way for him to use it.
He smiled to himself.
Could he connect to that power?
Somehow, he would have to find a way to do so. Jason let that sense of the wind, of the fluttering of the scales, work over him.
He held on to it, letting it fill him.
If only he could understand.
Not just understand, but he wanted to have some way of reaching the dragon. If he could know what she knew, if he could borrow from her power, then maybe she would be the key to understanding how to create a truly effective illusion.
The door came open and Jason shook himself back into alertness, slipping the leaf back into his pocket. He didn’t want any of these Dragon Souls to know about it, and if they did, he had to worry about what they would do with it. The way they would use it.
The woman stood framed in the door again.
“You will come with me,” she said.
Jason got to his feet and glanced down at the chains. “How can I go with you?”
She offered a hint of a smile. When she did, the chains disappeared.
His breath caught.
What had she done?
When he’d been around Therin and the other Dragon Souls, he’d never seen anything quite like that. The nature of the power and the magic of the Dragon Souls had been such that they still had to use it on real things. This, what he had just seen, reminded him of an illusion rather than anything real.
“What did you do?”
“What did I do?”
“Were the chains even real?”
“Did they feel real?”
“They felt real enough,” he said.
“Then perhaps they were real,” she said.
“They weren’t,” he said. He leaned down, looking for any remains of the chains, but there was nothing. He looked toward the back wall, but there was no sign of the chain that he had torn through. Had he somehow broken free of imaginary chains?
If she had that kind of control over creating illusions, he was in far more danger than he realized.
She headed down the hallway, and Jason had no choice but to follow. He could remain in the room, but he also was curious. It was more than just a curiosity about who she was and what kind of things she might do. It was a curiosity about whether she could teach him anything about how she had formed those chains.
More than that, he wanted to know if she already knew about the difference in his eyes. If so, then he needed to be especially careful.
What would happen if she had already seen past his illusion? It would be more than a question about why he had come here for testing. It would be a question about his hand, and the nature of the power he was able to draw through the glove. Jason wasn’t sure he had any answers for that.
At the end of the hall, she stepped through a door, and Jason joined her. They were outside in bright sunlight. The sun shone high overhead; blue skies swirled. An occasional cloud dotted the sky. Dark figures swooped, dragons chasing patterns, and he couldn’t take his eyes off them.
He was tempted to reach for the dragons, to borrow from the ice dragon to see if there was any way to connect to them, but with this woman here, he worried about what would happen if he were to do so. He had a sinking suspicion that she was aware of the way he was using his power.
There had been no sign of her knowing whether or not he could use the illusion, but he couldn’t shake the sense that there had to be something within her, some way of her knowing what he was doing. The more that she was around him, the more unsettled he was.