The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2), Dan Michaelson [best books to read all time .txt] 📗

It wasn’t only the vase I needed to move.

The dragon.

They’d gone missing. Thomas had gone after them.

Now I’d found one.

Given that it was early in the morning, I wondered if the easiest solution would be to bring the dragon straight through the Academy. I could explain that I’d found it, or felt it, or I could somehow alert somebody else so that they would know the dragon was here. I certainly couldn’t leave the dragon alone. Not if Jerith intended to drain him completely.

There might be another way though. He had said there were tunnels.

“I’m going to try to free you from these shackles,” I said. “Do you understand?”

The dragon looked at me, and for a moment, I felt a surge of power, large enough to make me believe that the dragon did understand what I was saying. I focused on the first shackle around one of the dragon’s legs, and pushed power out through me, probing into the shackle. I tried to create a looping of flame around it, using what I could to circle it.

I continued holding on to that energy and looping, surging outward.

I could feel something.

There was power within the shackle.

For a moment, I worried the shackle would hold, but as I continued circling power, cycling it around the band surrounding the dragon’s leg, I could feel the power expanding.

I pulled.

It snapped.

I breathed out a sigh of relief.

Now to move on to the next one.

The dragon started to roar and I held my hand up, cycling a hint of power through the other two dragons and into this one, hoping to calm him, if nothing else.

“You have to be relaxed,” I said. “We can’t let them know you’re free.”

The dragon roared again.

“I need to get you out of here, but you have to leave the way that you came in. Do you remember how you came in?”

The dragon leaned forward, pressing his long snout up against my hand, and heat radiated from it. At first, I worried that he might react, but gradually he began to settle.

“There you go,” I said. It felt as if I were trying to tame a horse or a stubborn bull; the effect was the same, either way. I had to be calm and confident, and I had to be careful not to make any rapid or sudden movements.

I grabbed the metal vase containing the dragon power. It was large enough that I had to hold on to it, as I wasn’t able to store it in a pocket, but I had to think that once I got out of here, I would figure out some way of destroying it.

I headed to the door, pausing a moment, and worried that it might be locked and that I would have to fight my way out, but it came open easily.

Relief swept through me as it did.

I pulled on the door, leaning on it for a moment, and then waited. I didn’t see anything along the hallway, but I continued to wait anyway. I wasn’t sure whether Jerith and whomever he had been with would return, but I wanted to be ready in case they did.

The dragon moved across the floor, heading toward me.

I turned toward him, raising my hand and trying to connect to him to push him back, but he had none of it.

“You have to wait until it’s safe to come through here,” I said. “Just give me a chance to ensure that it is,” I added.

The dragon looked at me, snorting briefly, and then waited.

I breathed out a moment, thankful that he hadn’t pushed any farther toward me. I didn’t want to have to deal with a wild and violent dragon. There was no other movement.

I turned to the dragon and again asked, “Do you know how you came through here?” There came a soft rumbling. “If you do, then can you find your way out?”

The dragon rumbled again. Hopefully that meant yes, though it was difficult for me to know anything for certain when it came to him.

“I am going to let you through here, but we need to work together to find a way out,” I said to him.

He seemed larger than he had been before. The energy that flowed through him, flowing from me to the other dragons, seemed to be even more potent now. Power rolled through the other two dragons, providing something extra for this one.

The dragon pushed past, into the hall, and started toward the stairs leading up into the main part of the Academy. I chased after him, then raced in front.

“Wait,” I said, glancing over my shoulder as I realized just how loud my voice was. I pushed power out from me, and tried to keep the dragon from moving, though I didn’t know if it would even make a difference.

Surprisingly, it worked.

The dragon waited, no longer trying to push past me.

“We need to go the way you came in.”

The dragon surged with a hint of power—his way of responding to me. I had no idea what it meant. He sniffed, and the strange surge of energy continued. Within it came something more, something unexpected. The flow started to cycle, yet I detected a directionality to it this time. Almost as if the dragon tried to guide himself a certain way.

The dragon turned and slithered along the hallway. He didn’t move the way I would’ve expected, but within the confines of the hall, he had to keep his wings folded into his body and he wobbled as he walked, almost slamming off of the walls. Were he any larger, he wouldn’t have been able to come through here.

The hall narrowed around us, and the ground seemed even damper than it had before. We were sloping gradually down, and surprisingly, the doors along the hall ended, leaving nothing in their place.

We had reached a dead end.

The dragon pressed up against the wall. It was the end of the tunnel, which meant that it was as far