Forest Dragon: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (The Dragon Misfits Book 3) Read online

  Forest Dragon

  The Dragon Misfits Book 3

  D.K. Holmberg

  Copyright © 2020 by D.K. Holmberg

  Cover by Tom Edwards

  All rights reserved.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Author’s Note

  Also by D.K. Holmberg

  1

  The cold was biting, tearing through the upper slopes. The longer Jason was here, the more he began to question whether his sister would be able to tolerate the same cold that he could. For his part, he felt it as an overwhelming sensation that filled him, almost more than he once could bear; and yet, with his dragonskin clothing and his connection to the ice dragon, he was better able to handle it than he ever had been before.

  “I don’t remember it ever being this cold,” Kayla said.

  She let out a breath that steamed in the air. Her head was covered by a thick fur hat, and the black fur jacket should have kept her warm, but with as cold as it was, it was possible it wasn’t doing nearly as much as it needed to. Without the dragonskin jacket, Jason wasn’t sure if he would have been able to tolerate it as well.

  “Father used to tell me—”

  “Father used to tell you many things.” She smiled as she said it, though it looked forced. “What can you tell me?”

  Jason had spent so much of his time thinking about what his father had taught him that he often neglected his own observations. His father’s lessons wouldn’t help when it came to the dragons. Not that Jason knew, at least.

  Which meant it was up to him.

  What did he know?

  It’s cold. Too cold.

  “I don’t remember this kind of cold either, which means something else is going on,” Jason said. He had no idea what it was.

  He focused on the distant sense of the ice dragon. He had to be out there, and yet, Jason couldn’t find his location. If the dragon was involved in the unusual cold, then perhaps that would explain things.

  Only, Jason hadn’t seen the dragon for the last few days. He was aware of the sense of the dragon, but he hadn’t spotted him. It left him worried, wondering whether something had happened, though with as much power as the dragon had, he had a hard time thinking anything could have happened to him.

  Jason motioned for his sister to follow, and they made their way along the snowpack, winding quickly. She said nothing as she trailed behind him. Jason still didn’t know whether or not she was bothered or afraid of the dragon. He knew how he had reacted. He had been terrified when he’d first seen a dragon.

  Kayla seemed to tolerate it much better.

  There was something else about it, though. For her, it seemed almost as if the dragon gave her a sense of hope she hadn’t had for quite some time. It was a sense of purpose. Jason had gone with his sister many times, trudging up and down the face of the mountain, giving her the opportunity to see the dragon again. Most of the time, the dragon remained hidden. He’d revealed himself for Kayla, but he had gone into hiding again shortly afterward.

  And now they were searching for any movement.

  In the weeks that he’d been back, he continued to wait for Therin and the Dragon Souls to appear. With every passing day, he felt a growing certainty that something would change. And yet, he’d been able to fall back into a pattern, one where he could wander and roam, though no longer alone as he had been. He went with his sister, traveling with her and having company he’d never enjoyed before.

  We aren’t hungry. That’s another change.

  And because of that, a sense of relaxation flowed between them.

  “I can’t believe you spent much time outside like this,” Kayla said.

  “Most of the time, it wasn’t quite as cold as this,” Jason said.

  “Most of the time?”

  As she turned to him, a gust of wind caught her, sending her staggering back.

  He reached for her, catching her arm before the wind sent her tumbling downslope. With enough initial force, she could slide quite a ways down the mountainside. Jason might have some way of using power, but he didn’t know what would happen to his sister if she were tumbled down the side of the mountain. He didn’t want to risk it.

  “Most of the time,” he said.

  They should return to the village. The cold was far more biting than usual, and the swirling snow made it difficult even for him to see much. He might have dragon sight, but Kayla did not. He might have the ability to notice heat and the difference in temperature, but with as cold as it was, there was no noticeable difference. It would take a significant change for him to be able to detect anything.

  He was determined to continue his search, checking to ensure there was nothing else out here to be worried about. He wanted to be alerted if there were any signs of dragons.

  It was a strange thing to be hunting for dragons rather than looking for food. For the most part, he’d spent his days searching for food, but now with the ice dragon, he no longer had to worry about that. The ice dragon helped, hunting alongside him and providing him with the necessary resources. Without that, he would have been forced to go in search of rabbits or squirrel, or try to find deer, but now he had plenty.

  From what he had been able to determine, he and his family were the only ones.

  The village suffered. It was why Reltash had tried stealing from him. The hunters had found it difficult even on the back face of the mountain, and many had gone hungry over the last few months. It wasn’t something that Jason had heard much about. For the most part, he stayed out of the village gossip. Typically, he hadn’t been a part of it because he hadn’t been a part of the village. Ever since his father’s death, there had been a wall between his family and the rest of the villagers. It wasn’t intentional—at least, Jason didn’t think it was—but most people found it hard to talk to him and his sister. And then with his mother being as sick as she was, that difficulty had been more pronounced.

  “I don’t see anything,” Kayla said.

  “I don’t either. I think it’s time for us to head back,” he said.

  Kayla sighed. “I just want to…”

  “What?”

  “It’s hard. I understand I need to help Mother, but I can’t help but feel as if there’s other ways for me to be useful. There has to be more for me than just sitting around, waiting for her to wake. I feed her. I cook. And I trade for the necessary items in the house, but…”

  Jason thought he understood. It was the reason she’d been so eager to go after the dragon. She had wanted a sense of purpose.

/>   And it was different for him. He had felt a sense of purpose, though he hadn’t gone looking for it. It was as if the sense of purpose had come for him.

  A steady rumbling built, and Jason frowned.

  It reminded him of the dragon, but he didn’t think that was the case. He would have been aware of the ice dragon had it been near. And though he knew the dragons might come looking for him, he saw no sign of them, either.

  His hand throbbed. He glanced down at the metal surrounding it. He found it difficult to keep a glove on it, almost as if the iron dragon pearl had formed its own sort of glove, but in cold like this, it began to ache in a way that it didn’t otherwise. It was stiffer, too.

  He pushed on a hint of power, letting it roll through him, letting it fill the hand. In doing so, he was able to remove some of the stiffness. It took energy and effort on his part, but in order to lose that stiffness, he was willing to use it. Besides, it also connected him to the iron dragon, and in the time he’d been back in the village, he had lost sight of where the iron dragon was. He had no idea where he was hunting, and if he was even safe. It was different than what he felt with the ice dragon, where he had a vague sense of how to find him.

  “What was that?” Kayla asked.

  Jason shook his head. He tried to peer into the darkness, to penetrate the swirling snow, but his eyesight wasn’t that good. He focused on the power of the ice dragon, drawing it through him. If nothing else, he wondered if he could use it in order to better understand what he’d heard.

  It wasn’t just him who had heard it. Kayla was aware of the rumbling as well, which suggested that if nothing else, it was real.

  It didn’t come again.

  He hesitated, but then he started forward again, up the face of the mountain. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Kayla it was time for them to return. They’d visited the cave, found the ice dragon gone, and had wandered along the stream long enough to search for anything else, but there was nothing else out. A storm was coming, and the wind and cold swirled around them. Kayla’s lips were growing bluer, which told Jason that she wasn’t nearly as tolerant of the cold as she pretended. She was strong and had grown up out here, the same as him, but she didn’t have the same resistance that he did.

  As they headed up the slope, the rumbling sounded again.

  Jason hesitated.

  He listened, trying to understand.

  Gradually, the rumbling intensified, picking up speed.

  Rumbling in the mountains can be only two things. Storms or…

  “Avalanche,” he whispered.

  Kayla looked over, her eyes going wide.

  If there was an avalanche, neither of them should be out in the open. He glanced back down the slope. It was too hard to see, but they would need to make it to the cave. It was the only place he could think of that would offer any protection, and yet, he didn’t know if they could get there quickly enough.

  He sent out a summons to the ice dragon. He pushed through his connection to the dragon, using the sense of the cold, using that sense of the dragon within him. In doing so, he could feel the energy rolling away from him, and he tried to grab it, to do anything in order to call to the dragon, but there was no response.

  The sense of the avalanche continued to intensify.

  Jason looked around. They had to find protection.

  On this part of the mountain, there was no shelter from the elements. It was them and the wind. Nothing more. The only protection they had was the cave, and that was far enough away that they weren’t going to be able to reach it.

  Jason focused on the heat he could summon. Thankfully, he was wearing his dragonskin, and he was warm enough. He used the summoned heat, letting it flow through him, and he pushed out through the iron dragon glove.

  It exploded from him and formed a hole in the snow.

  He grabbed Kayla, pulling her into the hole, and hunkered down.

  With the shelter around them, he looked out at the swirling wind. It was a makeshift cave, and as soon as the avalanche flowed over them, they would be trapped. It was possible the snow would fill the new cave that he’d formed, and it was possible they might not survive, but he thought he could push outward, using the power from the iron dragon to perhaps blow the snow away.

  The avalanche reached them.

  It did so quickly, snow at first dribbling over the edge of his new cave, and when it struck the barrier he had formed with the iron dragon’s energy, it steamed.

  More and more snow collapsed on them, and as it did, it formed a burst of moisture around them. Jason held on to power, and he pushed against the avalanche. He’d never tried anything quite like this, and he didn’t know if he had enough power to do so. With his connection to the iron dragon, it was possible to hold on a little bit longer. He needed to hold out as the avalanche crashed around him, and if he could, he might be able to maintain protection for him and his sister.

  The snow cascaded, filling the inside of the cave. Kayla cried out.

  Jason drew on more power. It flowed outward from him, a surge of heat.

  The rumbling thundered around him. It reminded him of the dragon battle, the cacophony of noise that came as the dragons were thundering around him, the way they’d clawed at each other, tearing at each other, and yet this was all the work of nature.

  It seemed to go on forever. He had last felt an avalanche like this farther down the slope; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d noticed one this high in the mountain. It was unusual, and mostly because his people did a good job of trying to trigger avalanches higher up so that they didn’t get caught beneath them. There was always quite a bit of snow in the upper reaches of the mountain, but never so much that they should be trapped.

  He held on, gripping his sister, his arms wrapped around her as the snow continued to crash around them. He squeezed, afraid of letting go. The longer that he held her, the more he felt that he needed to draw more power. The problem was he didn’t know if he possessed more power. He was drawing everything he could through the iron dragon, gripping the glove tightly, squeezing it and letting power flow through him. Jason added a hint of energy coming from the ice dragon, and even that wasn’t enough.

  The snow filled the inside of the cave.

  They had enough air, and with the pressure that he formed, they were safe.

  With the weather being what it was, the wind whistling around them, this avalanche was different. It was tied to the storm. Perhaps the cold had made the snow unstable.

  His sister cried out again and they huddled together, neither saying anything as the storm continued to rage around them, the cascade of snow falling, and he held on to power, no longer pulling with nearly as much.

  His breath was shaky.

  How long would they be able to withstand the ongoing trembling? How deep would the avalanche cover them?

  Those were the thoughts that filled his mind. He waited, counting the moments as the rumbling persisted, waiting for that time when it would finally end.

  And then it was done.

  He sat there, shivering, but not because of the cold. With dragonskin, he was rarely cold.

  “Is it over?” Kayla asked.

  Jason took a shaky breath. “I think so.”

  “I’ve never felt anything like that before.”

  “I haven’t either.”

  “Had you not…” Her gaze drifted to his hand. She had questions about it, but he had never answered them before. He had never wanted to.

  “I did what I was able to do,” he said.

  They waited for a few moments, and then began to dig.

  Jason pushed through the snow, using heat through the iron dragon glove, letting it flow outward from him. It struck the snow, melting it around his hand, making it easier to dig. The snow filtered around them, falling, and Kayla cried out.

  Jason hesitated, looking back. The snow was surrounding her.

  He needed to try something different. They had to dig out of here, and
he had no idea how deep the snow was, and yet, each time he disturbed the snow, it swirled around her with even more force.

  It was almost as if he wasn’t going to be able to dig them out.

  “Hold on to me,” he said.

  “Jason?”

  “Just hold on to me.”

  She grabbed his waist.

  He thought about telling her to use his legs, but decided that wasn’t going to work either. She was scared, and grabbed on to him tightly. He wasn’t going to tell her how to hold. Instead, he began to dig. He used power, drawing from the iron dragon, but also through the ice dragon, letting that strength fill him, and he pushed at the snow, exploding outward.

  He had expected it to blast outward, the same way he had experienced the power exploding other things, and yet the snow seemed compacted, and it absorbed his explosion. He tried everything he could, and yet there was no way to push past the snow.

  He sat back. “I can’t get us out.”

  Kayla whimpered.

  There were plenty of people in the village who had been caught in avalanches over the years. The stories of them were many, and just as many were the search parties that went out from the village, looking for anyone who might be lost, and yet, he doubted anyone would come for them. They had gone out early enough, and they had gone in a direction that few others would travel. It would be difficult for anyone to find them, and he knew better than to expect anyone to come for them.

  Kayla trembled near him.

  He focused on the sense of the ice dragon. He needed his help.

  He tried to focus on the iron dragon too, but this wasn’t the kind of weather the iron dragon would be able to withstand. It was too cold.

  He sat there, and the warmth of the dragonskin began to fail. The cold all around him pressed inward, almost more than he could tolerate, and Jason started to shiver.