The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3), Dan Michaelson [books to read now TXT] 📗

I looped bands of power around me, pushing them outward, creating flames that streamed over my head.

I pushed power through my shoulders, using the technique Walter had demonstrated, and could feel it splitting up over my head, curving above me. From there, I felt how it parted, creating a barrier around me, swirling around my head and over my shoulders. I tried to create something more with it, but could not feel anything distinct. It felt as if it were moving far too slowly for me. As I held on to it, I tried to force even more power out from me, but with each time attempt, I could feel the resistance within me, the nature of the power seeming to struggle against my ability to form the same weave Walter had demonstrated. I could do it, but not with any speed, and that was what troubled me. If I wanted to use it, wanted to have any benefit to this pattern, I needed to find some way to do so that would allow me to call it quickly. Otherwise, there was no chance I could use it how I needed.

I paused in the center of the room, calling upon the power within me, feeling the dragons flowing, their power coming together as I held on to it. I focused as I pushed that power up through my shoulders, creating the explosion and the split of power over my head. It became something different. I continued weaving that power, letting it swoop over me, until I could feel some aspect of it shifting.

It might have only been my imagination, but it might have been something tied to the dragons, and the way they pulled on that power. I wanted to call upon it. I wanted to—

“You have improved quickly.”

I lost control of the weave and turned to see Walter watching in the doorway.

He stood in place, continuing to watch me but saying nothing. For a moment, I worried I had made a mistake by the way I had been holding on to the weave. Perhaps I hadn’t been controlling it nearly as well as I had thought. Here I believed I had improved upon some aspect of the weave, thinking that the way I held on to it had given me an understanding of how to continue to twist it, but perhaps I had not.

“I’ve been trying to use it the way you instructed,” I said.

He nodded, approaching slowly. He closed the door behind him and sealed it with a hint of power. I barely noticed that he used dragon power to do so, creating a pattern in front of the door.

Some distant part of me became concerned about why he felt the need to close me inside the room with him, but I pushed it away. Walter had been the one to show me this weave, and had wanted me to learn it so that I’d be prepared for any defensive magic needs. With what we’d encountered in the Academy, I was on edge, but I didn’t think there was any reason to distrust him.

“I would like you to form that again,” he said, approaching me.

“I don’t know if I can. I’m getting tired, and I—”

“Form it again.”

He stopped in front of me, arms crossed in front of him, intense gaze in his eyes.

I didn’t need to debate him about this. At this point, I thought it made sense for me to try to do anything I could in order to hold on to the type of weave he wanted, if only so that I could demonstrate my ability with it. If I could show I knew how to create the right kind of weave, and I could use it in the way he had demonstrated, then I might be able to learn other techniques.

Still, even though I’d been holding on to the weave, and I’d been working with it, trying to master the technique, I still hadn’t controlled it as well as I wanted to.

He waited.

Focusing on the energy of the dragons, I called power up through me, pushing it up through my shoulders, and then felt it split. When the weave formed, it did so over my head, and I began to work one strand under the other, twisting it in a way that brought it together, forming the binding, slipping the ends around each other and sealing it all together.

“Very good,” he said, watching. “You have a bit of hesitation. When you can get past that, you will have mastered an even more difficult aspect of this.”

“It’s not so much hesitation as it is a difficulty in ensuring I have the weave properly made,” I said.

He stepped off to the side, and within barely more than a blink of an eye, Walter formed the same weave I’d been working on, creating a cage around himself.

“It is practice, nothing else.”

“Thomas tells me you use this as a test.”

“Did he now?”

“He also told me he isn’t able to make this weave nearly as quickly as you.”

Walter nodded slowly, tapping his hands on his protuberant belly. “Very few within the Academy have ever mastered the weave as quickly. It is a particularly complex pattern, though as I have continually told others, there is great value in mastering it, especially as it permits the one who can do so to defend themselves in ways others cannot. There have been countless times that my weave has protected me when others have suffered.”

“Such as when?”

“Well, there was a time when I was on the eastern edge of the country. It has been many years, thankfully. I’m not one to enjoy conflict. There are others who are much better equipped for such things than myself.” He smiled slightly. “As you can well understand,” he said.

“Where was it?”

Walter waved his hand, and he continued to hold on to the weave around him, forming the cage that held him inside. “It doesn’t matter. I found myself needing a protective defense quite more frequently than I