How was that even possible? Then again, he didn’t know how any of this was. It shouldn’t be possible for him to have this much of a connection to something that he hadn’t experienced himself, and yet he was aware of it. He could feel it, and he could feel the way that the power was building, surging through him.
And he knew that Sashaak wanted him to know.
The wind spellcraft form swept toward them. Laric tried to brace for it, but this time, the form was too potent.
It clipped Sashaak’s wings.
Laric suspected this was all a memory, but even as a memory, he was seeing and feeling too much, to the point that it felt overwhelming. He couldn’t shake the power; he couldn’t shake the anger. He couldn’t shake the fear.
All of that bloomed in him.
But he tried to ignore it.
He wasn’t sure if the reason Sashaak was showing all of this to him was so that he would know what Sashaak had experienced when it came to the mages, but there was something else that Laric hoped to learn from it.
There were forms here. If Laric could see and experience them even a little, then he had to hope that maybe he would be able to draw on that power in a way that would let him know what the mages were doing. Why would he need a mage instructor if he had a dragon that could show him memories? Talia would be angry, but then, Talia deserved to be angry.
The vision shifted again.
This time, Laric tried to track the flow of it, and he tried to make sense of what it was that he was seeing: Sashaak was descending. He could feel heat and flame, but the images were too difficult to follow.
He focused instead on the spellcraft form that was happening around him. Laric couldn’t tell exactly what it was that was building around him, only that there did seem to be a bit of a structure to it. The spellcraft forms carried power, and the heat was the key, the cornerstone, of what he was picking up on. Somehow, he had to master more of that.
The attack came too quickly, though it didn’t come from the spellcraft form but from someplace else. The answer, when it hit him, surprised him: the dragonborn riding atop Sashaak. Malinar.
He felt the heat, and he felt the burning energy. And he felt something else.
There had been fear—Sashaak’s—but now there was a different sort of fear.
Why was he experiencing Malinar’s memories mingled with Sashaak’s? How was that even possible?
He focused, and even as he did, he continued to feel that strange fear bubbling out of Sashaak, that strange energy that seemed to dissipate. As he focused on that potential, Laric was increasingly aware of how that power was escaping from Sashaak, and there wasn’t anything that Sashaak was going to be able to do.
Other than hide. That thought came through Sashaak, almost as if the dragon was trying to ensure that he and his bonded knew exactly what it was that they were going to need to do. They had to hide; otherwise they were going to die.
And though Sashaak didn’t fear, he feared for the dragonborn.
The image fluttered through him. And then it disappeared altogether.
Laric tried to stay focused on it, and he tried to keep his mind locked on what he was seeing and what he was feeling, but even as he did, he didn’t know if there was going to be anything more that he would be able to identify within it. The images had flashed so quickly, slammed into him with such a ferocity, that he couldn’t help but blink and stagger away.
Then he was back in the cave. Back with Sashaak. And still without any greater understanding.
“Why?” Laric asked him. “Why did you show me that?”
“So you can know.”
“What am I supposed to know?”
Laric took a step toward Sashaak. They had to understand each other, he knew. The dragon wanted that.
Sashaak remained curled up and quiet. “You wanted to understand the purpose behind the connection.”
“I do,” Laric said.
“That is the purpose,” Sashaak said.
“The purpose is for you to show me images like that?”
“The purpose is to share.”
“And you did. But you shared with me an attack. You shared with me violence.”
“I shared with you the loss of my last.”
“I still don’t understand,” Laric said.
“No,” Sashaak said. “Which is why I will not share more.”
Chapter Nine
Laric and the others were quiet. He had moved to the edge of the cave, and he was looking out at the darkness of night, his mind racing with whether or not there was going to be anything he would be able to detect, but he had not been able to pick up on anything. He kept coming back to some of the memories Sashaak had shared with him, and he kept trying to piece together what it was that Sashaak wanted him to know.
There were different spellcraft forms that had come through those images, and Laric had to try to better understand what the spellcraft forms were and whether there was going to be anything within them that he might be able to use. Increasingly, Laric couldn’t help but feel as if that was the key to all of this. If he was able to somehow control some part of that, then why shouldn’t he draw upon and use it? And perhaps even master it.
“You’ve been quiet for a while,” Rowan said.
He let out a heavy sigh. “The dragon was showing me images,” Laric said. “And to be honest, I don’t even know the purpose behind most of those images. I thought that he was showing me what he was showing me so that I could understand something about the dragons, but all I saw was a series of images about him and the dragon rider and the attack by the mages.”
