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

this would be a great place to hide were there to be another attack. With a barrier over the doorway, if I were ever to master that technique, I could seal it off and no one would be able to get in. Or better yet, it could be used to seal any attacker inside.

I wasn’t given the option of hiding throughout my experience with attacks. And I doubted that if there were another attack—Vard or otherwise—I would get the chance.

There was a steady dripping of water, and nothing else.

I looked around for any other opening. The water had to go somewhere, though I couldn’t tell where. I crawled forward, heading out of the tunnel I had come through.

As I neared the entrance to the tunnel, I realized something was wrong. It took a moment. There was light there.

It glowed in the distance, just bright enough for me to barely make it out, and it seemed to drift into the tunnel more clearly than it should.

This was a barrier in place over the entrance to the cave.

My breath suddenly caught.

If Eleanor had come, thought I had left for the day, and replaced a barrier over the opening . . .

“Oh no,” I whispered.

I continued crawling, and when I reached the entrance, I realized that was exactly what it was.

A barrier blocked me. It was the Eleanor.

I thought about what she had done, and how she had overpowered it, but there would be no way for me to get past it.

“Hello?” I called out into the garden, but worried I wouldn’t be heard. Even if I were, what would the gardeners do? I supposed they could go for Eleanor. I hadn’t been down here all that long, and if she knew she had trapped me inside, I had to think she would come for me and remove the barrier so I could escape. “Is anybody out there? I need Eleanor to come let me out.”

I waited for a moment, listening, but there was no sound from anybody. There was nothing.

“Hello?” I called out again, this time louder.

As before, there was no answer. I waited, but I wondered if perhaps it was late enough in the day that the gardeners had already ended their work and gone inside.

Which meant I was going to be stuck here until I figured out a way to escape.

I called back the power and started to focus on it. Eleanor had proven I couldn’t break through it, but that was from the other side. What if I could break through it from this side? It had been an outward facing spiral when she had placed it which left me thinking that maybe another burst of power—maybe even an inward facing spiral—would permit me to overwhelm it.

I didn’t believe I’d be successful at forming one. I had barely formed an outward facing spiral, and even then, it had not been enough to seal the doorway.

To begin with, I used a binding of power and whipped it at the seal, but as before, nothing happened. I tried again, and again. Each time was the same.

I needed something more powerful.

If I could use the inward facing spiral, maybe that would be effective enough.

I took in a deep breath, then started to spin my hand, holding on to power as I did, readying for the release. I didn’t need to have nearly the same level of control. All I needed was to unleash the power upon this opening. It didn’t have to be held quite as taut as when I had otherwise.

I continued to send the spiral outward, then released it.

It struck the opening, sizzling out as it carved past it.

This pattern was too powerful.

I could try something else.

I crawled back toward the larger opening, and when I reached it, I turned around, and then back down the tunnel until I reached the branch point again. I lowered myself to my belly. As much as I didn’t like the idea of trying to crawl through it, there had been the sound of water in the larger opening, and I thought I could follow that—perhaps it came from a stream or some other groundwater source I could follow until I got out.

I pulled myself forward, crawling and slithering across the ground. It was difficult, but the farther I went, the more I could feel the tunnel opening around me—at least, enough that I had a sense of how I might be able to escape.

So far, I hadn’t gotten stuck. Getting out would be difficult if I had to back up again, but hopefully I could find a way through here so that wasn’t necessary. I lost track of how long I was crawling. The tunnel never got any larger.

Then it started to narrow.

I tried sliding forward, but when it felt like my shoulders were squeezed on either side of the tunnel, I knew I had to back up.

The tunnel squeezed around me, making it difficult to move. Though I pushed myself backward, trying to back out, I felt a moment of panic as I feared I was actually stuck. Then the tunnel loosened, and I was able to crawl backward.

I continued moving back, increasingly quickly, and finally reached the branch point again. I debated backing up to the opening, but if I did, I wasn’t going to be able to see anything or get out.

Either way, I was going to be here until Eleanor released the barrier.

I crawled into the main chamber. At least I could stand up. After having been cramped for as long as I had, it was difficult for me to do anything, and I could feel the pressure upon me, as if the tunnel wanted to constrict me even while I was standing.

I gathered myself, trying to take deep breaths, and focused. If I were here for the night, then I’d have to find a dry place to rest, and when I awoke, I could call for help.

It wasn’t that I wanted to spend the night trapped in this