Rather than drawing upon his power, he borrowed only from the connection between them. He didn’t want to draw upon the ice dragon’s magic, not wanting to harm him and not wanting to overwhelm him in any way. They had exerted considerable energy the longer that they had fought, and this fog was evidence to that.
More likely was that the ice dragon remained high above, soaring above the clouds, drawing upon the ice and the cold and using that to restore himself. If only Jason could borrow something similar.
“Can you see through the fog?” he asked the dragon.
“There is something about it that makes it difficult.”
“Is it because it was a combination of both you and the ice dragon?”
“It’s possible,” the dragon said.
Possible. And if that were possible, then what else would he be able to do? When it came to dealing with the dragon like this, when it came to knowing that power, it might be more than Jason was going to be able to do.
And perhaps that didn’t matter.
He focused, trying to peer through the cloud, using his dragon sight, but he couldn’t see anything. If the dragon couldn’t, it was unlikely that Jason would be able to see anything either.
Every so often, he felt a fluttering, a shimmering. It came from a stirring of the breeze, a reminder of the power of the forest dragon, and each time it came to him, Jason was convinced he would need to do something in order to ignore it. He had no idea if he was even going to be strong enough to withstand another illusion. So far, the fluttering hadn’t amounted to anything.
They circled, soaring high overhead, parting the fog. The iron dragon seemed to take on more strength, his entire body glowing more brightly and more solidly, and with it came an increased sense from the iron dragon.
Not only did the iron dragon begin to grow in his strength, but the ice dragon did as well.
“We need to find what’s real,” he said.
The dragon rumbled.
Was there any way to pull some of that power back?
If it was just a matter of pulling on power, then he was going to have to find how to draw it into himself. He was focusing on the fog and the fact that he couldn’t see through it, but what he needed to concentrate on was the fluttering wind. If he could use that, if he could know what was out there, then perhaps he could overpower it.
Jason waited until the next stirring came to him. When it did, he latched onto it, drawing on it. There came a surge. It rumbled within him, reminding him of the dragon.
The energy continued to build.
The fluttering became a steady breeze.
Had he made a mistake?
He had thought that by latching on to that fluttering, he was attaching to what he could detect of the breeze itself. Perhaps what he should have done instead was focus on the illusion.
None of this was real. All of this was in his mind, visions, and yet even this didn’t feel like a vision. It felt real enough, and given what he detected around him, he believed that it was real.
“Were you seeing the same vision I did?” he asked the iron dragon.
“Which vision?”
“That of dragons fighting.”
“I saw it.”
“Do you believe the forest dragon has the ability to show you visions?”
“I believe such a thing is possible. She is incredibly powerful, though hers is different than mine.”
Jason inhaled deeply. It was clear to him that the dragons had different abilities, and the more that he spent time around them, the more that he understood. Somehow, the abilities were similar. They all came from the same power, the same dragon heritage, and yet because of where they were hatched, something about them had changed.
He needed the help of the forest dragon for this.
In order to defeat Therin, he was going to have to find some way to overpower whatever he was able to draw through the forest dragon.
He focused on the illusion, remembering what he had seen. The dragons had been flying overhead, twirling in the sky, fighting with a violent energy. He had seen it, and he could feel it, and he was familiar with that energy.
As he focused on the sense of what he’d seen, he thought back to other illusions that he’d had, and the way that they had overwhelmed him, and he tried to find some connection between them, searching for answers as to what was between the dragons and what he had seen. Yet there wasn’t any.
All of it was tied to the forest dragon. All of it was tied to finding some way to destroy the illusion they had formed for him.
He breathed in.
He focused on what he could control. He had a connection to the iron dragon. A connection to the ice dragon. And, regardless of how faint it was, he did have a connection to the forest dragon. She had allowed that connection. He didn’t know if it was something he could use, but she had not wanted to fight openly.
But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t willing to fight at all.
Was there some way to connect more strongly to her?
He thought about what he had seen when he had been in the forest with her. There had been the touch, the connection he shared when he had placed his hands on her cheeks, feeling the velvety surface of her scales.
That sense filled him.
The connection was there.
He thought about what he had detected when he had touched the forest dragon. There was that sense of the forest. There was the sense of her. The smells of the air. There was the gentle breeze.
That was what he was feeling.
Maybe there wasn’t an attempt at another illusion here. Maybe that gentle breeze was the forest dragon trying to grant her connection to Jason, and he just had to be smart enough to know how to reach it and use it.
When he had been trapped within his mind, the illusion holding him, he’d felt the way it had worked through him, the way it had made him sway from side to side, the power of it filling him. He needed to call that power. It was there, swirling around him.
It was a stirring, the way her scales had caught the wind, shifting. She had changed reality for him, creating an illusion all around her.
And that power was given to him.
He was surrounded by the fog, and the longer that he thought about it, the more certain he was that the powers of the ice dragon and the iron dragon were working together to overpower the illusion formed by the forest dragon. Still, that didn’t mean that Jason couldn’t borrow from that sense and use it.
More than that, in order for Therin to have created such a powerful illusion, one that not only he had seen, and that his friends had seen, but the dragons had seen and believed, it would have to have been triggered by someone drawing upon it actively, wouldn’t it?
Perhaps he could use that.
If he could draw upon the illusion, if he could change it, he might be able to do something else.
What had he done when he had been trapped in the illusion?
He had forced it.
Cold. That was what he thought of first. It was home to him, the first place his mind went, and it was familiar.
He tapped on the iron dragon, and they descended.
He thought about his home. He thought about the iron dragon, and where he had found him captured in Varmin. He thought about the forest dragon and the way that he had seen her sitting within the trees, hiding.
All of it was fear.
He could use that.
Fear was something familiar to Jason. He had known it his whole life, growing up around it. The fear filled him: the fear of not finding enough food. The fear of what would happen once he lost his father. The fear of what would happen to his sister and mother once his father had disappeared. And now he had to fear what would happen if Therin managed to take his sister and drag her back to Lorach.