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

touching her on the side. Her scales were cool, not holding the same heat I normally associated with the dragons. Normally, they were filled with enormous heat that exploded out from them.

In the case of this dragon, the energy within her was faint and fading.

“Let me see if I can help you,” I whispered.

She lowered her head. There was a resigned look in her eyes, and some of the energy seemed to fade even more. I touched the cuffs around her legs, pushing power through them until they snapped open.

She still didn’t move.

I had to find a way to undo what had happened to her. The vase held much of her power. I lifted it, looking at the writing on it, reminded of the Djarn symbols upon it. It was much like the other one.

I focused on the green dragon, feeling for the connection to the others. They were linked through me. I needed that power to go into this dragon. I needed to replenish her. I needed her to have added stores of energy.

Only . . . I also worried it wasn’t going to be enough.

I sent more power out from me, trying to link to her, to connect in a way that would fill her, give her the strength she needed to hold on to life, if only for another moment.

With more power flowing, I finally began to feel the connection form. It was slow—much slower than when I’d connected to the other dragons before. Power surged through this dragon, linking me to her and to the others. The other dragons seemed to recognize her weakness, and power flowed from them, through me, and into her.

Now that I was linked to her, I could feel the effect of that vase of power and held on to it, pulling more energy back and away from the container. It took everything in my being to do it.

The dragon raised her head, looking at me. There was a little bit more vibrancy in her eyes. Heat began to build along her scales.

“You’re free. You can slip out from here, head back into the forest, and find one of the others.”

The dragon rested there.

Maybe she wasn’t going to be able to get up quite yet. She was still faded and weak, and needed time to recover. She had suffered. Until she had a little bit more time and strength, she might not be able to get moving.

I tried to let energy flow through me and into her, filling her with the power of the other dragons. Gradually, it worked. Strangely, I found I couldn’t help as much as I had before. It took me a moment to realize why, but it was because of my connection to the other vase and this one. That required most of my focus.

A surge came from the green dragon, followed by a flare of the now familiar irritation. It was a signal for me to keep looking.

This dragon would survive. I could feel she would survive. I needed to figure out how to undo what had happened to her, but until I did, I wasn’t sure that I could do anything more for her.

How many had Jerith claimed they had? Five, if my memory served me.

I had found two. That meant there were three more. Given what I had felt from this one, I needed to act quickly.

Crawling over the stone and back out onto the street, I stood there, leaning up against the stone wall. Something shifted and the stone crumbled, crashing down behind me.

I looked through the stone, but the rest of the structure stayed intact. Let the dragon get away when she could. The other dragons who were connected to her now could help her. I didn’t know how they would summon her, but I believed they had some way of communicating to each other.

I closed my eyes, focusing. That was how I was going to find the other dragons. I had to open myself up to them, find the distant energy of a dragon within the city where it didn’t belong. When I did, then I could finish this.

The sense of it was faint, but I found one.

I raced around the outer edge of the city. Power coming off of the dragon mixed with something else, which left me a little bit concerned. This one was fading, much like the female dragon I had just encountered. I wondered how long I had to find the remaining three. Perhaps less time than I had believed.

I hurried through the city, racing as quickly as I could, passing shops and homes and the smaller buildings that existed on the outskirts of the city. People glanced in my direction, but none looked for too long. I hurried past them, panic driving me. I soon neared the source of that energy, finding it near a temple.

The temple was three stories tall, with two spires on either end. Vines grew along the sides, and I didn’t see anybody coming in or out of it. Could it be abandoned like the last building?

The temple itself seemed intact, but I had to be cautious. I wasn’t sure if the king’s justice would extend to me violating the sanctity of one of the temples. That may put me in a different sort of trouble.

I approached, walking around the outside of it. The grass was long and untrampled and the ground was fresh, no signs of anybody having come through here recently. I had to take the chance. What choice did I have if I believed the dragon was inside?

Starting forward, I found an open window. I pushed it all the way open and looked behind me before scrambling inside. I landed in a cloud of dust, my feet thundering on the wooden floorboards.

The temple was an enormous open structure. Benches lined the interior, all angled toward an altar at one end. Dust covered everything. I focused on the energy of the dragon, straining to find the source, and detected it near