Dragon Dreams

Chapter 30: Untold Power (2/2)

A half-restrained smile curled the dragon's mouth. "I'm not sure how much they taught you about magic on your visit up north," he said. "But I know they didn't teach you this."

The dragon looked at the stone beneath him and slid a single forepaw forward, resting it gently on the ground a few feet in front of him. He bent forward slightly, almost looking like he was bowing to me. Then I noticed the symbols on his hide. A few of the mysterious gold markings on his scales began to glow, faintly at first, then stronger. Gold light poured off him, and I drew in my breath sharply as the rock beneath me began to vibrate.

A harsh sound to my left made me jerk my head to see the source. My gaze fell on a crack that had sprung up in the stone floor, and my eyes darted to follow the gash as it quickly grew, spitting small bits of rock as it went. More deep shattering sounds erupted around me as other fissures blossomed in an odd, orderly fashion.

I looked back at Ares in confusion; his golden eyes were now fixed on me as he wore a smirk that fit him very well. It was quite a spectacle with the shafts of amber light playing around him. Words failed me, and it was all I could do to keep drawing breath as I witnessed the dragon's work.

The cracks formed a rough circle around the two of us, about twenty feet across. When the circle had been completed, the stone beneath my paws shuddered alarmingly, as if from an earthquake. Then the column of stone on which we stood began to rise into the air. The steady ascent continued until we were perhaps thirty feet off the ground. The whole time, the other dragon retained his smug silence.

In a rush, I had a sensation of snapping back into my body, and immediately I scrambled over to peer from the edge of the hovering mass on which I perched. A few small pebbles dislodged as my talons gripped the edge, falling away into the massive pit left by the levitating cylinder. A cylinder that—by my estimation looking over the side—was nearly twenty feet tall. I swallowed and retreated back to the middle of the circle.

The piece of rock was huge—I could only imagine it had to weigh at least a hundred tons or more. To my utter astonishment, we were still floating steadily in the air without so much as a flinch of effort from Ares. He simply smiled at me without a word, taking satisfaction in his work.

"What magic is this?" I breathed, astonished. I could never have imagined a display of such power. No dragon could sustain the effort that must have been required.

"This, Ayreth," he pronounced with appreciable weight, "is what we are capable of. And so much more."

I merely stared at him in wonder. Some protest was stirred up in my mind; surely this was some illusion, some trick. Ares had pulled these on me before. But as we lowered back to the earth, no satisfactory alternative to what I had just witnessed presented itself.

"What did you think of my little demonstration?" he said with contrasting levity once the rock had settled and moved no more. The glowing markings on his scales died out in turn.

I shook my head in disbelief. "How was that possible?"

"The magic you learned—the magic that nearly all dragons use—is a watered-down embarrassment to what we're truly meant to do. What you just saw is ancient magic, magic that has receded into legend. But the power is real."

"You're telling me..."

"Yes, I just showed you a glimpse of the power our ancestors once wielded. Magic that could move mountains and make the earth tremble." His eyes flashed. "Magic that made them the likes of gods."

A shiver swept across my skin at his words. So, the legends are true.

Ares' face turned sour. "Then, they inexplicably decided to throw it all away. The ancients let that power die; it was buried for millennia and almost lost completely. And since that time, we have suffered for it." The distaste was replaced by the prideful smirk that he usually favored. "But no more."