At first, he wasn’t sure if it was even going to work, but then came a sense of resistance. That resistance was the key. He needed to overwhelm that resistance, to find the source of it. The more he pushed, the more certain he was that he was detecting a real resistance.
Jason continued to push, sending more and more power, letting it flow over his hand, out and into the forest dragon.
She shook.
She didn’t fight, and for that, Jason was thankful. He was worried she might try to fight him and that she might try to take off. If she disappeared into the trees, he wasn’t sure he would even be able to catch her. Yet she didn’t make any attempt to disappear. She remained there, the power of the heat and the power of the ice washing over her. Together, it formed a cool wave-like sense, almost like that of water, and it flowed through her.
It sent a wave of color change over her body.
Jason stared, marveling at what he saw.
Then the resistance faded.
Whatever had been there was gone.
Jason continued to hold on to the ice and the fire, combining them as he touched her, letting that power flow through her, washing over her, a sense of water that filled her.
Nourishing her.
It didn’t surprise him that water would be restorative, and it shouldn’t be surprising that the forest dragon would be the one who would need that sort of restoration. As the power flowed through her, she breathed it in, her deep green eyes closing. When she opened them again, they remained deep green, but there were sparkles within them.
“Thank you,” she breathed out.
Jason almost lost his hold on the tree. “You can talk?”
“I can talk. They have had a hold on me for quite some time.”
“I thought we found you first.”
“They were here before you. They didn’t have to touch me the way you did in order to influence me. Unfortunately, they used their power to borrow from mine.”
“You know what they did to me?”
“I am sorry.”
“Why?”
“What happened to you is my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault. They just stole from you. They borrowed your power.”
“And for that, I’m sorry.”
Jason let out a heavy sigh. He could feel the power from her, and was aware of how much energy she had, but it was more than just that. There was something else about her. It was sadness.
She was disappointed in the way she had been used, and for that, Jason understood. She deserved better.
“I need to stop them,” he said.
“You do,” she said.
“Is there anything that you can do to help?”
“I have offered you all the help that I can,” she said.
“You haven’t offered anything.”
“It’s there.”
Jason shook his head, frowning. He didn’t know what she was getting at, and yet, he had a sense she wasn’t able to leave the forest.
“The dragons need your help,” he said.
“And they have it with you.”
“Please,” he said.
He hated that he was begging, but he hated more that she wasn’t willing to offer her assistance. The reason he’d come to the forest was not just to help her, but also to get her knowledge. And with what had happened to her, the way her power had been abused, he thought he needed it. He thought he would need to find some way to use her illusion in order to stop Therin and the others, but if she wasn’t willing to be a part of it, then anything he might want to do wouldn’t be effective.
“I have helped you. This is as far as I can go.”
“You can leave the forest. You don’t have to stay here. You can help in other ways.”
Even as he argued with her, he didn’t know if he would make a difference. He didn’t know if she would even understand, but he thought that she had to. He thought that she needed to comprehend what he needed from her.
And yet, even if he argued, Jason wasn’t sure if she would care.
She watched him, the sparkles in her eyes seeming to glow, reflecting the light in the sky. It was like he knew it wasn’t real. None of this was real. Perhaps what he had done to her wasn’t even real.
“It was real enough,” she said.
“You know what I’m thinking?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Jason Dreshen.”
“How?”
“I had to know your mind in order to influence it.”
“The illusion,” he said.
She breathed out, and her breath carried with it the scent of the forest, that of the leaves, the earth, even the bark of the trees. It carried that of the breeze, and life all around.
He needed to borrow that sense. He needed to use whatever he could in order to better understand, and the longer he was around her, the more certain he was that he needed her help, but how? Would she even be able to do anything to help him?
She stared at him, those deep green eyes seeming to swallow him. “At least lend me one of your dragon pearls.”
“You think that would make a difference?”
“I don’t know. If it comes down to stopping them, I think having your abilities, being able to create an illusion that is similar to what you have done, would be beneficial,” he said.
She smiled. It was probably only in his imagination, or perhaps nothing more than an illusion, but Jason was certain that he saw it. And as she smiled, he couldn’t help but think that he was wrong.
She wanted to help, but she couldn’t.
And he wasn’t able to force her.
He held her gaze for a little longer. If nothing else, he hoped he’d separated Therin from his power, and in doing so, he hoped that he had managed to find some way of preventing the other man from having the strength and knowledge to defeat Dragon Haven, but it might already be too late.
“What about my village?”
“You will need to free them,” she said.
“They still have your power?”
“They may no longer control me, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have my power,” she said.
Jason took a deep breath and looked along the surface of her body, studying the scales, wishing that she would lend him one the same way that she had before, but had she done that voluntarily? He wondered whether or not that had been coerced.
If it had been coerced, then he wouldn’t do it to her again. If she had been forced to reveal that power, if she’d been forced to lend that of herself, he wasn’t about to do the same thing. She was a powerful dragon, and she deserved for him to respect that.
He started down the tree.
“Good luck, Jason Dreshen,” she said.
With that, she started to retreat. Darkness began to intrude again and the sunlight filtering through the trees faded. All of it was nothing more than his imagination; all of it was nothing more than an illusion.
If nothing else, he had to hope that she had granted him the ability to see through illusion. But if she had, why had he still seen the illusion here?
There was still the sense of illusion, the fluttering of the trees, the sense of the breeze overhead. The entire forest might even be an illusion. He could feel it. He could feel that power, and he could feel what she was trying to do, and he could feel the way she was using that power.
When he reached the forest floor, he looked around.
Where was Sarah? Where was Henry?
They had to be here. The illusion wouldn’t mask them, though it might’ve masked him from them.
He didn’t see any sign of them and he started forward. He focused on the warmth, the way the iron dragon sense filled his hand, and he looked for the iron dragon, using that to help him search as he continued to draw upon power. His hand began to glow, that light pushing back the darkness, and he held it aloft.