Rowan shot up, and she raced over to him. The spellslip that she was forming was already nearly prepared by the time she got to him, though she didn’t need to release it. “Is she coming through?”
Laric shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it. I’m not exactly sure what she’s done here, but I think it has more to do with how she’s escaping on the other side.”
He watched and waited.
There was a part of him that wished he would have dealt with her when they had been inside the chamber. Or just left her to rot. Not that Laric knew how he would have dealt with her, only that he wished that he would have done something. She didn’t deserve a chance to be out here in the open with them—and potentially causing problems for them.
But then, he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything to her. That wasn’t him. Maybe he could hold her in that prison, but that was it. Or he should have taken her to someone in town who would have been better able to bring her to justice.
Now they wouldn’t be able to.
“She’s gone?” Malcolm asked. He had finally gotten up and made it over to them. He still seemed as if he were half-asleep, though Laric understood. Having not slept at all, he felt like there was a part of him that hadn’t fully come around either.
“We need to prove it, but I think so,” Laric said.
“So we just… go through?” Rowan asked.
“We did that before, so I think that makes sense. We can ask the dragon to go ahead of us and keep us safe.” Laric turned to Sashaak. “Will you do that?”
“That is not a place for me, nor should it be a place for you.”
Laric saw a flicker of images—glyphs, primarily—that told him why. They showed him what Sashaak believed of that place.
Laric didn’t say anything more, and he looked at the others. Iveris and Joselle were still sleeping, despite everything that was happening. He supposed he shouldn’t be terribly surprised because they were all exhausted, having spent so much time working, but he was still a little amazed that neither of them had awoken.
“Let’s get them up,” he said. “And then we cross over.”
It didn’t take long before the two were awake, and then he was standing in front of the portal. He was staring at it, and yet, even as he used his detection spellslips, he didn’t pick up on anything that was coming through the door. He attempted something more, a spellcraft form, thinking that maybe there would be some way that he could pick up on the energy that was there, but even as he tried to place more advanced spellcraft forms, there wasn’t anything that worked for him.
He felt nothing.
It wasn’t just that he didn’t pick up on anything from the other side, it was that he felt nothing whatsoever. He worried what that meant, wondering if there was some link to what had happened that he needed to better understand.
He stood in front of the portal, and then he activated the door.
Sashaak’s enormous form slipped forward, and like the last time, the dragon managed to shrink down into a much smaller, more compact shape, and work his way through the doorway. Laric was left marveling at the kind of power he was using. It was almost as if Sashaak was pressing some part of his potential downward.
And if that was possible for Sashaak, Laric had to wonder if that was possible for himself, as well. He didn’t know if the potential, the power that he was feeling, was connected in any way. He didn’t know if it was all linked, but he had to believe that there would be some technique that would allow him to be able to use all that power.
He felt the energy all around him. Then he stepped inside.
When Rowan came behind him, she sucked in a sharp breath. “It’s all different,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Malcolm asked.
But Laric knew what she meant. It wasn’t just about the glyphs that had been on the walls and floor. Those were gone. Then again, he had known that those were going to be gone.
Now there was something else. He saw it at the end of the room.
“I think we’re feeling her spellcraft form,” Laric said.
“Where do you think she would’ve gone?” Joselle asked, shuffling up behind them.
“I don’t know,” Laric said. “Back to the town?”
And if Talia had, it might not be safe for them to return.
He looked over to where Sashaak was working his way around the chamber, sniffing at the walls. Every so often, the dragon would pause in place and then slam his head against the stone. It was a bizarre thing to see, but once Sashaak’s head moved, Laric noticed that another glyph was placed.
Were the glyphs some way for the dragons to communicate?
He hesitated in front of the stairs leading up to the ruins of the shed above them. There was no sense of anything here. Just an emptiness.
“I think she’s just gone,” Laric said.
“She didn’t just disappear. Is she not trying to hide something from us?” Malcolm said. “You did have that way of concealing herself. Do you think she could have done something along that line?”
“Oh, I’m sure she could’ve done something like that, but I don’t think that she did this time,” Laric said. “I don’t know where she went, but I don’t sense anything.”
“Would you even know?” Iveris rubbed a knuckle in her eye and looked around sleepily. “I mean that in the most respectful way, but would you know?”
“Maybe,” Laric said. “But it’s entirely possible I wouldn’t have been able to pick up on it, especially if she was using a considerable spellcraft form that allows her to conceal herself. She had a way of hiding herself from the dragons, after all.”
“Did she, though?” Rowan asked.
Laric glanced over at her, and she shrugged.
“Well, we’re going on what she told us. She claimed that she had a way of protecting herself from a dragon, but what if she really didn’t?”
