Therin cocked his head to the side, studying him. “Forest dragon? I suppose we could call her that. Eventually, I will name her, and when I do, I will have complete ownership over her. Only once her training is complete will that be the case.”
“You won’t be able to train her. I saw to that.”
Therin glared at him. “Then it doesn’t matter. Do you think I need her to train? What I need is her power. I need for her to breed. Once I have others like her, we will have even more power.”
Jason shivered. If Therin had his way, they would drag the forest dragon away from the trees, they would bring her to Lorach, and they would abuse her. It didn’t surprise him that Therin would do that, but what surprised him was the anger in his voice.
The other man took another step toward him and Jason tried to fight, to get free, but he still couldn’t move his arms. Whatever the other man was doing to him held him lashed in place, tying him to where he stood.
Did he have to be stuck here?
It was something he hadn’t tried before, but an idea came to him.
All of this around him was an illusion. Therin might be real. The power Therin was able to draw upon might be real, but what he experienced was not.
A soft breeze fluttered through, and Jason redirected it. He shifted toward the snow.
A deep rumbling sounded.
Therin stared at him.
Jason pushed.
The ground began to shear away.
Therin scrambled, trying to stay on top of it, shifting the direction of his power.
“An avalanche?”
Jason shrugged. “I thought it was fitting considering what the two of us went through when we first met.”
He continued to push power through it, letting the snow cascade away, rolling down the mountainside, and as he did, Therin scrambled away from it.
Heat exploded from him and he pushed upward, holding himself hovering in the air.
But in doing so, he had freed Jason.
No longer was he held in place, and he was able to move, twisting, and he changed the nature of the illusion.
The mountain tilted.
Jason stood upslope, and the avalanche forced Therin down.
There was a deep precipice, and the other man somehow hovered above it.
He looked over at Jason. “You can’t beat me.”
“I don’t need to beat you. You’ve already beaten yourself.”
“I’ve done nothing of the sort. I’m the reason that all of this exists. It’s because of me any of this is here. You don’t understand—”
“And you don’t understand.”
Jason changed the illusion again, shifting it.
This time, he wrapped them into the dragon’s cave. The crystal in the roof overhead glittered. There was a familiarity to it, a comfort. As Jason looked up at the roof, he wondered if perhaps it was a mistake to show this to Therin, even in an illusion. The other man looked around, but Jason changed the illusion again, constricting it.
The inside of the cave began to shrink.
But it was only Therin’s part of the cave.
Jason stood apart, at the mouth of the cave, and he straddled the stream rolling through it. The inside of the cave came down, the walls crushing.
All he wanted was some way to overpower Therin.
He continued to squeeze, calling upon that power, letting it roll around him. He forced it inward, trapping Therin.
The other man strained against what Jason was doing, thrusting his way outward. Jason continued to hold on to his trap, trying to squeeze it even more, to confine him.
There was power pushing against him.
The breeze around him shifted, the energy that filled the cave changing. For a moment, Jason worried he wasn’t going to be able to hold on to it.
He felt resistance against him.
The cave shattered.
Therin strode forward, and the ground around him shifted.
Suddenly they stood within a circular room. Stone walls rose around and chains looped around Jason’s ankles and wrists.
Therin stood before him, smiling.
“You think you’re the only one who has access to her power?”
This wasn’t real. This was a battle within the illusion, and though he might not have Therin’s experience with holding it, he did know how to break free. He had done so before, and in doing so now, he knew he could reach for that power, that he could explode it away from him. All it would take was to find some way of overpowering what the other man was doing to him.
He focused on the chains first. They didn’t break.
What had he done when he had first been trapped?
He had called that power into him, burning it off through the iron dragon.
If he tried that now, there was a real risk that the iron dragon wasn’t going to be strong enough, and that after everything they had been through so far, the iron dragon wouldn’t be able to withstand any more fighting. Yet Jason felt deeply within himself that he had to find that strength.
He called on it.
He pulled that sense of power around him, funneling it through the glove and into the iron dragon. Slowly, the iron dragon responded, and gradually the power began to burn, tearing free from the illusion.
As it shifted, the power faded. He was freed from the chains around his wrists and ankles. Jason drew upon the breeze, the fluttering of the forest dragon, and he used that to find a way to change things. In doing so, he called to the power, letting it fill him, and he shifted it once more.
Snow swirled around them.
Therin pushed against it. They were within the circular room.
Jason forced his way again, and snow swirled within the chamber.
It was a merging of the illusions. Therin held his, Jason held his, and the combination made it difficult for either one to succeed.
“As I said, you don’t know enough about what you are trying to do to defeat me,” Therin said.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jason said.
“A different tactic? You think to talk me down? I’m sorry, Jason, but I’ve lived in this world far longer than you have, and I understand the nature of the dragons, and I understand the way they need to be trained and used. I understand what purpose they have in order to protect our people.”
And yet, Jason didn’t think he did. The dragons didn’t need to be held like this, and they didn’t need to be tormented. Regardless of what Therin might say, the man didn’t understand them. He didn’t understand the power of the dragons, and he didn’t understand the way that power could and should be used.
He wished there was something he could do differently, some way to use his abilities to overwhelm the other man, but as he tried, as he strained against it, he couldn’t find that power.
They were battling each other, drawing strength from the forest dragon.
In doing so, they were weakening her.
Every so often, Jason was aware of how that power shifted, and he recognized she wouldn’t be able to withstand much more.
It was the same way that the iron and ice dragon had failed, by reaching the limits to their powers. And it was something Therin didn’t conceive of.
To him, the dragons were a tool. They were meant to be used. They were pets, or something even less than pets. In his mind, the dragons were meant to be there for his purposes, nothing else, and as he used them, he didn’t care about the nature of their power, and he didn’t care about what more they could and should be doing.
Jason did.
Because he did, he had to believe there was something more to do, and he had to believe there was something more for the dragons.
If he didn’t act now, if he didn’t stop this, Therin would tear through the strength of the forest dragon, and she would fail.