It could be fear. He certainly was afraid, though strangely, he wasn’t nearly as frightened as he thought he would’ve been. He would see his father again. And eventually, his mother and sister would join them. They would celebrate in the afterlife.
The cold continued to build.
Was someone calling out his name?
Jason frowned.
The ground was close, and yet he continued to feel the cold rolling toward him, the surge of it, and he looked behind him.
The ice dragon swooped toward him.
“Be ready,” the ice dragon said.
He ducked his head, parted his wings, and streaked beneath Jason.
As he did, the ice dragon pulled up, and he grabbed for Jason.
Jason grabbed for the dragon at the same time and wrapped his arms around his neck, clinging tightly to the dragon.
He held on, but started to slip.
“I need something to grip,” he shouted. The wind was loud, whistling around him, making any conversation difficult. That was why he hadn’t heard the ice dragon in the first place, and yet, the ice dragon must have heard him.
Spikes began to protrude from the ice dragon’s back. Jason grabbed on to two of them, holding tightly.
The dragon spun and shot toward the sky.
But not before drawing the attention of the three Dragon Souls on the ground.
They watched and Jason looked down, knowing that they saw him, saw the ice dragon, and saw what had happened.
“How did you fall?” the ice dragon asked as they pierced the clouds.
“David kicked me off.”
The dragon rumbled.
As they parted the clouds, Jason looked, searching for the iron dragon, but there was no sign of it.
Where would they have gone?
He couldn’t leave David with the iron dragon, and yet, he had no idea how to search for it.
“Can you detect him?”
“I feel that dragon no differently than I feel the others.”
“How many others?”
“There are four others,” the ice dragon said.
“How much of the others can you detect?”
“Not as much as I would like,” the dragon said.
Jason wished there were some way to find the iron dragon.
And maybe there was.
He released one hand and searched through his pocket, sorting the various pearls he’d uncovered, and came across the iron dragon pearl.
He might not understand how to connect to the iron dragon, but he had ridden the dragon, and he had worked with him, and if there was any way to find him, he would search.
And it was possible he didn’t need to find the iron dragon.
He held the ice dragon and iron dragon pearl, and frowned.
“How much strength do you have remaining?”
“Enough.”
Jason wasn’t about to argue, so he called upon the cold, letting it roll through him. He was tired, but for the iron dragon, he needed to do this.
He sensed that power surging through him and connected, letting it flow outward from the ice pearl and into the iron pearl.
It was a strange way of attempting to heal the iron dragon, but what he needed was some way to connect, and he had the iron dragon pearl, which was a part of the dragon, even if it wasn’t a complete part.
At first, there was a strange resistance, but then the power began to flow.
It wasn’t just a power, it was a connection. It began to build, cold pouring from the ice dragon pearl into the iron dragon pearl. But then something changed, and it began to flow in the other direction. It was almost as if they were connecting.
Jason hesitated. He feared doing too much, and yet, he thought that he needed to do anything he could in order to help the iron dragon.
“Keep going,” the ice dragon said.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Jason said.
“I don’t either, but I think you’re doing what must be done.”
“Will this affect you in any way?”
“You are calling upon my power. It’s possible it will.”
And if it did, Jason worried that he was making a mistake. If he were somehow connecting the ice dragon to the iron dragon, fire to ice, then it was equally possible the Dragon Souls would be able to use that connection to reach for the ice dragon. It was possible they would be able to do the same thing he was doing now, and yet if nothing else, he was determined to try to free the iron dragon from any influence. As he pushed through the iron pearl, he continued to feel that power. It flowed outward, rolling from ice to fire, and yet it began to retreat.
There was no other influence.
He frowned, releasing his power.
“The dragon is not influenced,” he said.
That seemed surprising to him, and yet, he was certain of it.
And if he wasn’t influenced, then where was he?
Jason held on to the iron dragon pearl, looking around, and yet he couldn’t feel anything.
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
They had been betrayed by David, but so far, David hadn’t influenced the other dragon in any way that would change him.
It didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t trying to. All it meant was that for now, he hadn’t done so.
What if he wouldn’t be able to? It was possible that with what Jason had done, the way the ice dragon had healed the iron dragon, there was no way for the iron dragon to be influenced in the same way. If that were the case, then where had the iron dragon gone?
He stared at the pearl, trying to find an answer, but there were no answers.
There were only more questions.
He breathed out, thinking of the molten heat he knew when around the iron dragon. There was nothing within him that understood that heat. There was nothing within him that flowed the same way the molten nature of the dragon flowed. There was no part of him that would be able to understand the dragon in order to connect to the dragon pearl.
Still, somehow he had to find that part of himself. He had to find a way to reach deep within him, to uncover the connection he had to the dragon. He wanted to understand what had happened. He needed to find the creature. He had no idea what it was going to take or where that knowledge was going to come from.
He imagined trying to flow the same way the molten metal of the dragon flowed, thinking about how that sense of metal rolled along his back, the way that the dragon seemed to shift, change, and as he thought about it, he was certain there was some way to uncover it. Jason had to find that within himself, only he didn’t know where.
He held on to the sphere, the power of the other dragon within him. He knew it was there, that it was just a matter of finding it. If he could, then he could summon that connection.
Was there a part of him that worked the same way? He thought about how the dragon had slithered, the way he had used the undulating feature to draw heat through him, to power himself. There was nothing similar Jason could come up with. Try as he might, he came up blank.
The ice dragon circled, and Jason felt no closer to answers than he had been before.
Was this a mistake?
There was no way to find the answer. He’d been kicked off the iron dragon, and in doing so, David had made it so that he wouldn’t be able to return, so he would lose his connection to the iron dragon.
It filled him with rage.
That anger flowed through him, slowly, and he was unsettled by it, but he wasn’t about to let that rage consume him.