That had to be the key. It had to be that someone was summoning it.
Jason reached another branch point. Down one side of the tunnel, it was dark. He tried to peer down the darkness, but his eyes struggled to adjust, even though he had dragon sight. It was almost as if the brightness near him made it more difficult to see. He focused for a moment and then turned his attention away from that tunnel, looking toward the other section. Where the light was coming from.
As he stared, he saw no sign of movement. The only thing he was aware of was the buildup of energy.
He moved carefully.
With every step, he thought he might encounter someone along the tunnel, but there was no sign of anyone.
He noticed the building power again and pushed against it.
It was a strange sensation, partly because the power was rising so quickly, and it began to fill him with an awareness.
He wanted to draw upon it, but he had to ignore it.
When the rumbling occurred, he found it was nearby.
Where, though?
It had to be near enough that he could feel it, but he saw no sign of anything. There was a light somewhere, but even that was faded, so distant that it was difficult for him to determine its location.
There was no one else in the tunnel with him, and Jason began to move more confidently and quickly. As he hurried along the tunnel, a door caught his attention.
He frowned at it. It was made of iron and a swirling pattern of metal created a spiral along the surface, a massive lock hanging on it. He paused, pressing his hand on the door for a moment. Heat radiated from behind it.
That was strange.
He moved on, heading along the tunnel a little farther, and as he did, he came across another door. This one was similar.
It was barred closed and he focused on it, pressing his hands on it as he had the first one, and as before, he could feel the heat radiating from it.
Strange.
He didn’t realize that iron mines were warm, and yet, he hadn’t spent any time in an iron mine and knew nothing about what was involved.
Maybe they were all hot like this.
The energy began to build again.
This time, it was close. It filled him.
As much as he tried to resist, he couldn’t, and the power he detected started to push against him. Jason found himself pushing back, though he worried about doing so.
When the rumbling occurred, it seemed to come from everywhere.
Not just everywhere, but mostly in front of him.
The door.
He had to know what was behind the door.
He might not have a key, and as he looked along the hallway, he found no place where a key might be located. What he had was a dragon pearl, and he knew how to use the energy within it. It was possible he might be able to focus enough power into the lock that he could destroy it. But whatever was on the other side of the door might be dangerous.
If it was, he would have to be prepared to either run or attack.
Jason pressed the dragon pearl up against the lock. He focused on the power within himself and pushed out through the pearl.
It exploded into the lock.
The sound rang out along the tunnel. It was like a bell tolling, the iron ringing, and he covered his ears.
He looked around. There was no one else here, but something like that would draw attention. What was happening on the other side of the door was different, but it wasn’t drawing nearly the same attention that he was.
As Jason pulled on power again, letting it flow through him. He thought there had to be some way to use what he was detecting.
He drew upon that power.
It exploded again.
Once more, the sound of a bell ringing echoed along the length of the tunnel.
At that point, he was tempted to turn around and head back out of the tunnel, but the energy built from the other side of the door. This time, it grew quickly, and when it rumbled, it did so with a violent sort of energy.
It was almost as if that energy were calling to him, demanding he open the door.
There was some intention behind it, and he thought he had to find out why.
Jason pushed the dragon pearl up against the lock again, and he started to pull on his own energy. The power that he detected from the other side of the door began to build once more, and rather than ignoring it or pushing it away, he decided to draw upon it. He would use that power, whatever it was, and he would see if he could summon that in a way that would allow him to unlock this door.
When the power flowed through him, he slammed into the door. It exploded.
The lock snapped.
There came another tolling of a bell, a ringing much like before, but he ignored it as he pushed on the door. It swung open. Heat wafted out, almost more than he could take.
Jason looked around the inside of this room. There was a softly glowing orange light, and it permeated everything.
He was in a narrow hallway. It ran parallel to the hall he had been in, and behind it were rows of bars.
At first, he wasn’t sure what the bars were for. Then the light began to dissipate, enough that he was able to see more clearly, and as he did, he realized what it was and why he was seeing it.
They weren’t just bars. They were cells.
And on the other side of the cell was a dragon.
8
He froze in place, staring at the dragon. This one looked nothing like the ice dragon, and it looked nothing like the dragons he’d seen with Henry near Dragon Haven. This one was all dark scaled, and there was something off about it.
It turned its head toward Jason, eyes blazing a bright orange, and energy began to build. As it did, the darkness on the dragon faded, becoming a matching orange, glowing with an intense heat.
The dragon exploding power against its cell had been what he’d felt.
There was incredible heat. More than he could bear. When he had been around Henry and his dragon, there had been nothing like that, and when the dragon had taken on heat, it had not become unbearable to be near, but this was something else.
Jason took a step back. “I’m here to help.”
He didn’t know if the dragon was able to understand him, didn’t know if it could read his mind the same way the ice dragon could, but if it could, he wanted the dragon to know that he meant it no harm.
The heat began to fade.
“Can you understand me?”
“Yes,” came a deep, rumbling voice.
“How long have you been held here?”
“Long.”
That didn’t help him. The ice dragon didn’t have a good sense of time, so why should this dragon?
Either way, he knew what he had to do.
Family first…
“Is there any way I can help you get out?”
He didn’t see any sign of a lock or any other way of freeing the dragon. It was almost as if the dragon had been dropped in here, and yet, there had to be something. The bars were all of stone, slatted so narrowly that the dragon wouldn’t be able to escape, and Jason walked along the outer edge, searching for some way to get to the creature, but there wasn’t anything.
There had to have been a way of getting the dragon in, so there had to be some way of getting the dragon out.
He looked at the bars, and yet he couldn’t find anything.
“You can’t escape, can you?”
“I cannot.”
He pulled out the dragon pearl and pressed it against the stone and focused on the heat, pushing it into the stone. It exploded against the bars, but nothing else happened.
Then again, why would he have expected anything to happen? It would be the same thing that the dragon was doing. It was trying to draw heat, and that was what Jason was doing.