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

It would still be glowing if it were still there, but I didn’t see anything to suggest its presence. I separated a band, and created a burst of weak power that I whipped forward.

For a moment, I had a feeling the opening was no longer blocked, that I could crawl out, but the band of power rebounded off of something and came back toward me. I hurriedly pulled it back into myself, withdrawing the power so it didn’t strike me.

I still heard the thunderous sound outside of the cave. Whatever had triggered it left me thinking that something was taking place within the city, or at least near the Academy. Whatever sound had exploded near us was potentially dangerous.

I crawled toward the entrance to the cave, feeling my way forward in the darkness. I pressed out a tight band of power, little more than a thin stream of energy I stretched from one hand to the next, and it created a burst of power that arced between my hands, sizzling in the air.

This one was different.

Something was going on. The explosion was loud enough so that I knew something was taking place. But what? I tried looking out into the darkness, seeing nothing but more darkness.

Releasing the band of power between my hands, I waited for my eyes to adjust, trying to stare out into the night. There was no moonlight, or if there was, clouds had obstructed it. I found myself searching for what I had heard, but couldn’t come up with the answer.

Nothing in the garden seemed to be moving. There were no shifting shadows. No rustling of leaves. No stirring of wind, even. Everything was still.

Within that stillness, I felt something off.

A drawing sensation.

It was strange, potent, but it was something I had felt before—and recently.

Vard.

Though it didn’t have to be Vard.

There were others who had targeted the city before.

But what I felt, the strange pulling on me, reminded me of the Vard.

The Vard hadn’t been responsible for the attacks in the past. Why attack now if they hadn’t in the past? Unless they knew that the Servant was missing and the king was responsible.

How could they have reached the capital though?

There should have been other layers of defenses—dragons, dragon mages, and others who would have prevented them from reaching the city.

I needed to get out of here.

The longer I sat here, the more I felt that strange pulling sensation I had felt when I was with Thomas out on the Vard lands. Whatever was out there was calling on enough power that it drew on me.

It was potent.

I cycled through the dragons, feeling for them, testing whether there was anything within that connection I might be able to use, especially something I could use to alert them. If there were danger, I wanted to notify the dragons of it, mostly so they didn’t end up suffering under an attack.

I felt nothing.

I continued trying to call upon the dragons. The energy was there, and I continued cycling it. I could feel the power as it flowed out from me, through the dragons, and back, but even within that, I detected something different. I felt the power pulling on me, some aspect of it that attempted to draw off of the dragons.

Another explosion thundered, this one somewhere nearby; it was distant enough that I couldn’t tell where it was, though close enough that I could feel its effect.

I had to get out of here.

It wasn’t only for my safety now. If I stayed trapped here, I feared what would happen to the dragons. If the Vard appeared, they could attack them, they could use their strange power to drain the energy of the dragons.

I was not willing to sit idly by and wait.

I had to do something.

I approached the barrier. I had already tried to disable it, had already tried to overpower it, and had failed at both. I might be able to blast my way through the stone around it, but even if I did, there was no guarantee it would be effective. It was possible—and probable—that it had been fortified with the same sort of power as other places around the Academy.

Worse, if I did target the stone, there was a very real possibility that I might end up with the tunnel collapsing around me. The only way out was either through this opening, or by finding my way through that narrow tunnel I hadn’t dared crawl too far along.

The thought of doing that again, crawling through the darkness, risking myself as I slithered along the tunnel, left me trembling just a little bit.

That wasn’t going to be the way out.

Which meant I had to somehow remove this protection, but how?

The only way someone could do so would be to have the same connection to the dragon. That was the key. If the dragon were involved, the power could be returned. Otherwise, the barrier would stay.

I frowned, but I thought could try that.

I had been around Eleanor enough to know the feeling of the dragon she had connected to. It struck me as something similar to what I might use. It was possible I could draw upon that energy, that I could call upon it and cycle the power out of the barrier and back into the dragon.

Unfortunately, it might involve putting that dragon into the cycle with the others.

I wasn’t sure whether that was safe. When I had added dragons to the cycle before, it had been with the other dragons’ approval. In this case, I had no idea if the other dragons would approve of me attempting to do something like that, if they would resist it, but I felt I had to try.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the energy of the barrier here. It was imbued with a distinct sense of the dragon from which it came.

Distinct enough that I recognized which dragon Eleanor had used. It was one of the dragons within the dragon pen, and that