If he didn’t get free, then more than just the ice and iron dragon were going to be in danger. The forest dragon would be in danger too. If there were others, perhaps a water dragon as Sarah had said, they would be in danger. The Dragon Souls would go for them, and without his help, the people of Dragon Haven, anyone who might want to assist, wouldn’t know where—or how.
That was the anger that filled him.
It did so slowly, building gradually, boiling up within him. It was the rage of the fact that they held him here, that they were going to keep him isolated. Regardless of any powers they might need to separate him from, severing any ties to the others, he didn’t think they would have the ability to disconnect him from the iron dragon. The magic of that dragon was so different than any they knew.
Jason let that power flow through him, letting the anger and rage fill him, thinking about what the iron dragon had felt like what he’d been caged.
Images came to him.
They rolled through his mind, one after another, images of men on the other side of the bars, taunting the dragon, throwing things at him, jabbing him with sticks. They had offered food, but it had been rotten. Somehow the iron dragon had survived all of that, and despite all of that, he had still thrived.
And yet, he deserved better.
Rage began to build, flowing through him, the anger of the dragon, the anger that matched his own, and as it grew, he let it pour out into the dragon pearl.
He sent power toward the doorway. It slammed into it and then bounced back toward him. Jason was struck by his own magic and was thrown against the wall, striking his head, and he blacked out.
16
Jason came around slowly, his head throbbing. It took a moment to realize what had happened, and when he did, he remembered the way he’d drawn upon the anger, letting it fill him, and the way that he’d thrown it at the door. It had been useless. Whatever protections they had upon the cell were solid even against the iron dragon’s magic.
Jason sat in place, crossing his arms over his legs, staring, completely trapped.
He didn’t know if he could even figure out a way to escape. They had neutralized any connection he might have to the dragons. He focused, thinking about the strength he wanted, thinking about the power of the ice dragon, that of the iron dragon, and wondered if he could mix them. They had been joined when he had tried to heal one, and he wondered if perhaps he could join that power again.
Nothing happened.
The only other option was to draw upon the heat of one of the remaining dragon pearls, but he didn’t want to do so and draw attention to this place.
He pulled out the dragon pearls he’d claimed from the Dragon Souls.
He now had nearly a dozen, and as he sorted through them, he was surprised to find that they were grouped by color.
Jason had not made that connection before, and when he’d been taking the dragon pearls, he hadn’t paid any attention to their colors, only that he was claiming them. There was power within them, and a part of him knew he could use them, and yet, now that he had them, he didn’t know if he truly could.
One of the dragon pearls was a deep maroon. He didn’t see a black pearl, though he had to wonder if the blue dragon pearl with the black lines through it was the black dragon’s pearl.
The maroon dragon. He had freed her. He had felt that freedom as he had done it. And regardless of where she had flown off to, he thought he could use her power. The more that he thought about it, the more certain he was she wouldn’t even mind if he did. She’d been freed by him and he had done nothing to harm her afterward.
It was a gamble. If he was wrong and if this wasn’t the maroon dragon’s pearl, then there was a chance he’d be calling to the Dragon Souls, revealing the location of Dragon Haven. Regardless of why they were holding him here, he didn’t want to expose that.
Calling upon the heat, he felt it fill himself, and he poured that heat into the maroon dragon pearl, then added to the sense of cold, mixing hot and cold, ice and fire, and he fed them into the dragon pearls.
He let it out, exploding it against the door. This time, Jason stood off to the side, prepared for the possibility the power would bounce back on him. When it did, he was ready.
The door held.
He staggered toward the back of the cell.
Jason tried again, focusing on the two different powers. As he did, he could only draw upon an explosion. He didn’t have any finesse. He let that power flow through him, holding the fire in his left hand, drawing cold through his right, and he combined them, blasting the doorway.
As before, the power rebounded, exploding back into the room. A streamer of dust trailed down from the ceiling, but nothing else changed.
What if he targeted one of the walls?
Jason focused on the stone next to him. He took a step back, and using a combination of fire and ice, he blasted it.
There came the explosion. The stone shattered, and yet it only created a small hole.
He tried again, sending power through it, and as before, there was another hole, though this one seemed to go deeper.
The power plunged into the opening, and as he used that, he couldn’t help but think that he could go from place to place before finally finding some way out.
And if he did, where was he going to go?
He was trapped here, and the moment that Sarah—or any of the others—found him, what would they do to him?
Jason ignored those thoughts, focusing instead on the hole. He would blast it open, get himself to freedom, find a way to get to the dragons.
He wasn’t about to wait behind while the Dragon Souls reached the forest dragon.
Coming here had been his idea, and in doing so, he’d taken time away from the ice dragon and the iron dragon, separating them from one of their hatch mates and potentially putting that hatch mate in danger because of the Dragon Souls. He was going to do anything in his power, regardless of what it would take, to get to the hatch mates and free them.
Focusing on the heat and the cold, he built power, and exploded it one more time.
He leaned his head down, looking at the hole.
It led into the next cell.
“Stop,” a voice said.
“David?”
Had he blasted his way into David’s cell?
“Just stop,” David said.
“I’m trying to get out of here,” he said.
“I can tell.” David’s face appeared at the opening of the hole. It wasn’t wide enough for one of them to crawl through, but David was able to stare through at him. “I thought these were your people.”
“They aren’t very happy that I didn’t reveal the presence of the ice dragon to them.”
“Why would you hide it from them?”
“Because I didn’t know what they might do to it.”
“You heard her mention training.”
“Their training is different than yours.”
“And yet here you are. Trained.” It seemed almost as if David smirked at him, though in the darkness it was difficult to tell.
“Do you have any ideas on how to escape?”
“I imagine you have found that your magic is ineffective.”
“It bounces off the door.”
“And not the stone?”
Jason shook his head.
“Interesting. I would have expected their protections would have enveloped even that.”
“I’ve used both fire and ice. The combination is how I freed the iron dragon. I tried the connection to the iron dragon, but…”
David leaned forward and stared at Jason. “You can use the power of the iron dragon?”
“I’ve begun to be able to use it.”