Page 54 of Dragon Blood

Behave.

Her dragon snorted, otherwise ignoring her.

Don’t do anything I’m going to regret later.

The dragon cracked an eye in her direction, then pointedly rolled it away.

With a deep breath, Astred stepped toward the crystal cavern. They walked, time meaningless, along a downward winding stone path illuminated by the crystals, reflecting light from an unseen source, until they reached a hub with a curved wall containing darkened passages.

The deeper they went, the stronger the power flowing through and around them. Astred lost her sense of embodiment, though she could see the illusion of her limbs and body. Her sense of vulnerability poked at her awareness, checking her wonder and anchoring her to her mission.

To understand the vision that brought her here, in order to save her mother and ensure the safety of Aeleftheria. As she stepped more fully into the hub, the tenor of the energy surrounding them shifted, causing her nape to tingle, despite the fact she realized that her corporeal body remained at the surface. Beneath the thin layer of flesh-toned scales protecting her chest, her breast bone ached and vibrated in time with the Nexus’ energy.

Her gaze dropped to her feet, where scorch marks marred the stone beneath them.

Three blackened circular imprints.

She crouched, fingertips dusting the gritty surface, exposing the familiar image of Aeleftheria’s emblem. A dragon entwined with a flame, backed by three connected spirals. Clearing the other blackened spots revealed the imprint of the seal that King Jori Mountainside’s tribe protected, bearing the image of a dragon and a man. The third displayed a man and a flame.

“The three seals,” Astred murmured. “Were they enchanted here?”

“Three seals?” Kai asked, studying the images.

“Together they unlock the treasure that Aeleftheria protects. Centuries ago, they were spelled to enforce a peaceful partnership.” Her fingers drifted over the incinerated stone. “It looks as though the spell was crafted right here.”

“By who?”

Astred shrugged. “Some immortal being determined to keep the dragons from destroying themselves. For the greater good of the earth, as I understand it from Odson’s stories.”

“The Divide?”

Astred nodded.

A sudden wave of disorientation sent her reeling.

Familiar images bloomed up around them, as though they were being immersed into a hologram. It was the exact vision that Regina had shared with Astred.

A shooting star streaked the sky over a tree bent with age, its trunk so vast it seemed to devour the clump of earth it clung to. Surrounded by rings of rippling water, it drew her forward until a black, smokeless flame appeared to engulf it. It neither burned nor withered as it disappeared into the heart of the flame.

The blaze brightened until painfully blinding, when a pair of blue eyes appeared. The eyes then formed into the body of a white tiger, emerging from the searing fiery light as the falling star sped toward them.

In the distance, oily smoke and writhing clouds grew as they tumbled toward her like an avalanche of blackened debris.

The tree disappeared, leaving only the smokeless flame, as its tendrils reached skyward toward the streaking light overhead. It rushed louder than a dragon barreling through the air, its scream denser than a freight train across a winter landscape.

In the distance, Aeleftheria’s walls stood tall. The image flickered as another Aeleftheria, its towers crumbled, villages streaming with blackened smoke, fought to superimpose itself over the original. They were in the midst of it as the chaos erupted around them. Screams, smoke, wind and flame buffeted their non-corporeal selves.

Dark figures writhed through the air, alight with fire, smeared with soot, while more clamored across the ground, clashing violently. Other structures rose behind the citadel, surrounded by protective shadows that emerged to blanket the sky, turning everything dark and obscuring the aerial battles.

Kai gasped. “The eastern temple.”

Shadows expanded, thickening, surrounding Astred and Kai.

“The eastern temple?” Astred repeated Kai’s words.

“That structure is a temple at the Air Dragon palace.” He glanced at her then, face pale. “The scratch marks your mother left in the wood grain aboard the Crimson Claw.”

“You said you didn’t know what they were,” she growled, gaze following the writhing darkness around them.

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