The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3) by Dan Michaelson (good summer reads .txt) 📗

south, soaring high, and I found I didn’t want to talk, almost that I couldn’t talk. I held on to the dragon and could feel the cycle of power still flowing through him; it gave him energy, but it also gave me energy. It filled me with a certain heat, a boiling energy that rolled through some deep part of myself.

I recognized that energy, recognized there was some other part of me that could hold on to and pull upon it. As I held on to the energy cycling, I tried to draw it up and through me. Gradually, the air no longer felt quite as thin, and the heat no longer troubled me.

We were descending.

We had moved far beyond the flickering flames, and had traveled for a long time, much longer than I would’ve expected Thomas to travel. Was this where he went when he left the city? If so, then I understood why he would be gone for so many days at a time.

Gradually, we started to circle, staying above the ground. There was a single light flickering below us, and as we descended, it didn’t grow any brighter or larger, just remained a small flame. As I turned in the seat atop the dragon, I looked around, searching for any sign of anything else, but didn’t uncover anything.

Thomas looked over to me. “You’ll have to be careful when we land,” he said.

From there, we continued downward. He didn’t say anything else, and though I waited for him to elaborate, he did not. We circled a little bit more, then came to land on the ground.

He hurriedly climbed from the dragon and held flames between his hands, stretching them outward, prepared as if to attack.

I climbed off a bit more reluctantly, following him.

I had no idea what I might find, and what we might face. It was dark all around, making it difficult for me to see anything clearly. The only thing I could make out was the fire glowing in the distance. It seemed to be coming up from the ground, as if it had been pulled from the pit, yet even with that light, I couldn’t make out anything else.

Other than Thomas.

The flames stretching from his hands illuminated him, making him bright against the night. He moved steadily forward, and the darkness made it difficult for me to tell where he was heading, only that he seemed to be going toward the pit of fire.

“Thomas?” I whispered.

I looked around and didn’t see anything. I glanced back to the dragons, and they were nothing but darkness against the night.

Thomas stopped near the flames shooting out of the ground.

I followed him.

Then realized it wasn’t flames shooting out of the ground at all.

It was power wrapped around the ground—flames held by something Thomas had done, lacing them across the ground, creating a barrier. Though there was a hole in the ground, I had no idea what he had done here, only that he had created a seal over the top of the ground. It reminded me of what I had felt Walter doing across the doorway in the training chamber, only this was a little bit different and seemed to be laced with even more power, crisscrossing over the hole in a way that trapped something inside.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

“What you need to see,” he said. Thomas glanced over to me. “Be ready.”

“With what?”

“With your connection to the dragons.”

I looked behind me. I could feel the green dragon, and I quickly began to pull upon the power within me, cycling it through and stretching it from one hand to the other. I split it, weaving it together and creating a tighter band, ready for whatever it was Thomas intended to show me. Whatever was here had to be incredibly powerful; he had feared it enough to have placed it inside a pit at the southern edge of the Vard lands, trapped beneath flames. The band of power continued to tighten, and I split it again, weaving again, then again.

When I was ready, Thomas watched me, nodding. “Very good.”

He crouched down and traced his hand along the outer edge of the pit, dragging some of the flames away from it. It happened slowly and steadily, but gradually he pulled away, and when he did, the flames began to ease.

Not entirely, though. Even though the flames were easing, I noticed something down in the distance, in the pit he removed the flames from. I stared, struggling to comprehend what I saw. There was heat and fire, but nothing more than that.

“What am I supposed to see?”

“Just wait,” Thomas said softly.

I glanced over to him and realized he held on to a band of power around himself as well. His was tightly woven, and he had it looped out and around the entirety of the pit, enough so that I suspected he could react quickly and pull that power back to him were it necessary. I did the same, and Thomas nodded, almost as if he approved. I kept my attention on the pit, trying to stare into it, wanting to know just what it was that was down there.

Flames started moving.

At first, I thought it was only a flickering fire, or perhaps lava. We hadn’t seen any sign of lava this far south, and there had been no evidence of flames for a long time as we traveled, so that didn’t make sense to me. Still, I didn’t know what I was supposed to see. As I stared, struggling to comprehend what was down there, I made out a shape within the flames, a figure covered by fire.

Not covered by fire, carrying fire.

A scarred figure approached, and heat radiated up out of the pit.

There came a sudden flurry of movement.

When it happened, Thomas reacted, constricting the band of flame he held. He looped it tightly and snared it, pulling it like a rope and trapping the figure inside.

He dragged the figure back, and when he was done, he stood out