Not only that, but he saw a shape. It was hazy, but he was certain of what he saw.
Another dragon.
With a startling understanding, he knew what had happened.
“Oh no,” he said, breathing out heavily.
He hurried over to where Rowan was crouched over Xavier. She pulled power through one of the spellslips, and it was, as she claimed, one of the ones he had helped her learn, the same way he had helped others learn it as well. It was a spellslip that was designed to create an aspect of power, and it drew on an element of water, which should create a healing wave. In fact, it was something that Laric had even used on Talia.
That thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. What he wouldn’t give to have that moment back. What he wouldn’t give to take away what he had gifted to Talia. It would’ve made all of this easier, and better.
“I think mages came here on a dragon,” he said.
Rowan’s eyes widened. She finished with her spellslip and then sat back, pulling her hands away from Xavier. He was breathing a bit more easily now, and as she turned Xavier ever so slightly toward Laric, he caught a glimpse of a bruised and bloodied cheek.
“They traveled on a dragon?” she asked.
“Seems that way,” he said. “I’m guessing that my dragon is chasing them.”
“Chasing the mages, or chasing the other dragon?”
“The dragon.”
“So the mages succeeded,” Rowan said. She sounded disappointed, though Laric understood that.
“Seems that way,” he said.
“What do we do, then?”
“We do what we’ve been doing.”
“No,” she said, looking around.
The horses had scattered, but they hadn’t run terribly far. Laric wondered how much of that was because of what Xavier had done to calm them. Some sort of a soothing spellslip, Laric suspected. He had to admit that it was an impressive use of that kind of power. And it was the kind of thing he could see plenty of use for.
“We can’t keep doing what we have been doing. If the mages are coming in response to Talia, then…”
Laric looked over the charred section of ground near them. He was lucky to have survived, but he guessed that it was because they had been pushing up with his own flame at the same time as Sashaak was pushing down with his, and they had combined in some way to do… Well, he wasn’t entirely sure what it was that they combined to do, but it seemed to have worked to burn up the mages.
“These mages aren’t going to be a problem for us any longer,” he said.
“These aren’t, but how many more will be? We don’t know how deep this goes. Talia made it seem like it was just Daelon, but we know that not to be true. So what if this is all the mages?”
“I think she made it quite clear that it was more than just Daelon, and that all mages want to gain control over the dragons,” he said.
Rowan nodded. “Right. All mages want to gain control over the dragons.”
Xavier groaned before they had a chance to work through what that might mean for them. Rowan reached for him, and again she attempted to form a spellslip, but this one didn’t feel nearly as potent. Laric didn’t know if he was feeling it correctly, though.
“Xavier?”
“How?” He breathed out. “There were three of them. They shouldn’t have been able to get here.”
“Dragon,” Laric said. “But I thought you would’ve seen that.”
“Saw. How am I still here?”
“Seems like the dragon got mad.”
“They were calming it,” Xavier said, sitting up. His eyes were wide, and a little wild. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. When you talked about them having some control over such things, I hadn’t expected it. I think if they had more mages with them, they might have been able to overpower the dragon. I tried to disrupt whatever it was they were doing, but I didn’t know enough.”
“Maybe had I not been drawing on the dragon’s potential, it wouldn’t have been a problem,” Laric said.
Sashaak had known. He had warned Laric.
“There was another artifact inside the cavern,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s my grandmother’s, but I assume it was. Probably some way to interpret the glyphs that she left behind.”
Xavier let out a heavy sigh. “Well, that’s valuable. I wonder how many other places like that she left.”
“You think she left others?” Rowan asked.
Xavier shrugged. “Don’t know. Seems like a logical thought, though. All we know about her was that she had been traveling to and from Korthal and dealing with some of these different relics, right? So if she had been dealing with relics, then maybe she decided that she needed to ensure that they were secured. But this means that she was trying to hide them from me.”
“Actually, I think she was securing them for something else,” Laric said.
He felt another surge from Sashaak. That was unusual, and more than a little unexpected. He had not anticipated that the dragon would still try to reach him, but that was the way it felt to him now. Sashaak was attempting to speak, or if nothing else, trying to share something with him. He couldn’t tell what it was. All he knew with any real certainty was that he felt some element of Sashaak, and he felt the way the dragon was there in his mind, almost as if he were waiting on Laric.
“I think she wanted me to understand the glyphs.”