“Someone like yourself? By that, you mean an Auran?”
She turned to him. “I didn’t think you were all that familiar with the Dragon Souls.”
“We were given some history on the journey.”
“Indeed? Perhaps you were. Or perhaps you knew more than you let on.”
Jason needed to be careful, but he also wanted to know more about her and what she was trying to do with him, and he wanted to know what she might know.
She smiled at him. “I believe you’re concealing something, Jason Dreshen.”
“I’m concealing my fear.”
“Perhaps. You will remain here until I understand more about your village. You will remain here until I understand this dragon that you keep thinking of. And you will remain here until you share with me what you know.”
She turned away, stepping through the door, and it closed behind her.
As soon as she was gone, Jason focused on the leaf in his pocket.
Everything odd that had seemed to happen had come after having the leaf. In his mind, that was why he needed to find some way of getting past what they were doing to him, and yet he had no idea how to look beyond what was taking place.
It was tied to the dragon. More than anything else, he knew it was, and it was tied to holding on to that power, to the strange leaf that the dragon had given him.
More than ever, he felt certain he had to master the power within that leaf, but what would it take? He sat back, leaning against the wall. As he did, he couldn’t help but wonder if the wall was even real.
What had he done to remove the chains?
It was a matter of focusing on the iron dragon, using that heat and trying to burn through the chains. But then, if it was an illusion, and if his mind believed it was real, then drawing upon that power might have freed him, but it wouldn’t have changed anything else.
All of this was almost too hard for him to wrap his mind around.
Jason took a seat.
He rested with his hands on his legs, and he held the leaf in his hands. He swayed back and forth again, thinking about the dragon, about the way she’d shimmered, and thinking about the way she had appeared within the tree.
As before, that image appeared, flickering into his mind, and he held on to it.
The dragon was there, sniffing him, pressing her warm head up against him, and she blinked. There was knowledge within those eyes, and Jason had to find some way to reach for that knowledge, to understand what she was doing.
If only there was some way to communicate with her, to find that understanding of what she was doing, of what she wanted from him, but he couldn’t.
The answer was with her.
If only he could understand the forest dragon.
He leaned back, focusing on power, and thought again of his village, of the way the cold and snow whistled around him, and the image came to mind. It flowed within him, filling him, and the more that it did, the more he felt with certainty that the answer was there. The challenge was trying to understand what the dragon might know, and using that knowledge in order to better understand what he could do.
If only he could understand himself, and if only he could understand what he needed to do, then he would be able to better understand what the dragon had wanted from him. If he could do that, then he thought he might be able to use that power. He might be able to use the knowledge of the dragon to hold on to the illusion.
No, it wasn’t just holding on to the illusion that he needed. Not anymore. What he needed now was to find some way to break through the illusion. Within this illusion, within what he was seeing all around him, Jason had no idea how much of it was real.
Every so often, when he looked around, he was convinced there was something real, but then it flickered and faded, leaving him questioning again.
And if none of it was real, then he had to wonder if there was any way to be able to see beyond it. He focused once more. This time, he thought about where he had found the iron dragon.
There was the warmth beneath the ground. There was a strange cell, and then there was the iron dragon behind the bars.
Jason pushed his hands up against those bars, feeling them. As he had then, he reached for heat and cold, a combination of both of the types of dragons that he had known up to that point, and he felt it explode through him. That power filled him, and he knew that he had to find some way to overwhelm it in order to break through the bars.
He continued gripping them.
The iron dragon pressed his head up against the bars, bursting with heat. As often happened, the glowing undulated along the length of his body, warmth radiating down his thorax, the glowing pulsating as it worked its way along.
“I don’t know how much of this is real,” he said.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters for me. I’m trapped here.”
“Are you trapped, or did you choose to go there?”
Jason shook his head. “I didn’t choose to get trapped like this. We came for answers.”
“And do you not have them?”
“I don’t know where any of my people are.”
“What makes you think there is some mystery to it?”
Jason stared at the iron dragon, wishing there was something for him to understand, wishing there was some way to know what was taking place and how to find a way to look beyond the illusion.
“How do I find what’s real and what’s not?”
“You find within yourself what you know,” the iron dragon said.
“And what if I can’t find it?”
“You know what’s within you.”
“That doesn’t help me.”
“Why not? You have knowledge of what you have experienced. You have knowledge of where you are. You have more than just your eyes to rely upon.”
“How does that help?”
“You believe what you see is all that there is. What I’m trying to tell you is that you can use other aspects.”
Jason shook his head, frowning. If only it were so easy.
He closed his eyes. When he did, everything was shut out. There was no sense of anything around him. No sense of energy, no sense of power. There was nothing.
And yet, there was everything.
When he closed his eyes, when he focused, he could feel a soft breeze along his skin.
Was that imagined or not?
It was illusion, wasn’t it?
But then, how skilled was this woman to create that illusion? If she were so skilled, she could create the warmth of the sun. If she could use that even to help generate the breeze, then she might be strong enough that he wouldn’t be able to ignore what was happening around him.
And if she were that skilled, then he might not be able to ever find his way free of the illusion. He focused on what he knew, and he focused on the sense of the breeze, the smells that were around him, and he focused on what he could hear.
It was using all of his senses. But even that wasn’t going to work. Even though he used those senses, he wasn’t able to determine anything from them.
Maybe there was another way, but what was it going to take?
Did he have any other senses he could use?
Magic.
That was the key. He had a connection to the dragons. A connection to the dragon pearls. And with the iron dragon, and with the glove, he had an understanding of power.
He had begun to feel that power, and with that, he thought he should be able to uncover what was happening around him. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was he could find that answer.
Was there any sense of power around him?
Jason focused on it. He thought about what he could detect, the way it was used, and he thought he could feel the tracing of power through the room.