As they swooped over the forest, Fes found himself staring at it. Within these trees was a different sensation than he had felt when he had been around the trees surrounding Thoras. From these trees, Fes had the distinct sense of life. It was of vibrancy, almost a heat, and it radiated up from the forest itself. He held onto that awareness, recognizing that it was there, feeling that sense within himself in a way that left him questioning until he realized that it came from the dragon.

  How was it that the dragon allowed him the ability to connect to the sense of life?

  “I never noticed this before,” he said.

  Larshon breathed out, mist steaming around his nostrils. “Your kind sees very little.”

  “I’m able to see the forest that you couldn’t see.”

  Larshon twisted so that one eye focused on him. He huffed again, and Fes smiled.

  As they swooped over the forest, there was something different.

  It took him a moment to realize what it was.

  Sections of the forest had been destroyed.

  Fes pointed, and Jayell sat up, looking out over Larshon’s side, peering down at the ground. She cupped her hand over her forehead, staring downward, but he doubted she would be able to see anything more than what he could see.

  Probably less. With his Deshazl eyesight, Fes could see much clearer than most others. Not only was his vision better, but with the connection to Larshon, Fes could borrow from the dragon and use that ability to better perceive life around them.

  They angled toward the destruction.

  At first, Fes worried that it came from the dragons. He had seen the dragons and the nature of their attack firsthand, and often enough that he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps they had been responsible for what had taken place here, but it didn’t appear to be caused by the dragons. This wasn’t charred and blackened stumps of trees. This was something else. Entire sections of the forest had been cut down, carved away, leaving gashes stretched across the ground. Within those sections, there was an emptiness.

  Fes couldn’t help but feel drawn to that emptiness. With a tap on Larshon’s back, they descended toward it, landing in the middle of a massive clearing. Sections of the trees had been destroyed, carved down and left littered on the ground. The longer that he stood here, the less confident he was about what had taken place. How had the Damhur destroyed this section of the forest so easily?

  “I don’t detect any fire mage magic here,” Jayell whispered.

  Despite whispering, her voice still carried. There was a somberness to the air, and Fes understood why she refrained from speaking too loudly. He felt the same hesitation. It seemed almost as if they would betray the needs of the forest by disrupting the silence.

  Fes breathed in. There was no scent of ash or fire. There was no tingle that would indicate the remnant of Deshazl magic. There was nothing.

  What had taken place here?

  Whatever had come through here had brought destruction and power, and it had done so in a way that had torn through the trees.

  “Why here?” Fes asked as he looked around. There was nothing particularly unique about this spot. They were deep within the forest, though not so deep as to have reached the Asharn. When he had seen it from above, he had thought that perhaps there had been a battle here, fighting that had ripped through the trees, a combination of Deshazl and Damhur magic, but there was no sign of either of those.

  It seemed confined to this area almost exclusively. There was nothing but the destruction.

  No other marks disrupted the ground. He continued to search, looking for a sign of fighting, anything that would lead him to understand what had taken place here. Power had been here, but what sort of power?

  “Have you seen anything like this before?” he asked Larshon.

  The dragon sniffed, his nostrils expanding as he breathed in. His tail curled around him, almost as if he felt the need to protect himself from some unseen threat. His wings curled up, giving him the opportunity to take to the air immediately if there were the need.

  Everything within Larshon’s posture spoke of fear.

  “Have you seen this before?” Fes asked again.

  Larshon turned his attention to him. “I have not, but there is something unnatural about this.”

  “Unnatural?” Fes turned to Jayell. What had the Damhur discovered? If they had some way of turning their power into destruction like this, he had to wonder where they would have learned it. The Damhur had centuries of preparation, time where they seemed to have an answer for every possibility, every way that the Deshazl would be able to attack.

  Fes made his way around the clearing until he reached one of the nearest trees. They needed one of the Asharn, if only to tell them what had been going on.

  Heading back toward the center of the clearing and Larshon and Jayell, Fes climbed on the dragon’s back. With a quick stirring of wings, Larshon lifted into the air, climbing high into the sky. Only once they were hundreds of feet above the forest did the sense of anxiety within Larshon begin to fade. They continued their journey, but as they went, Fes saw something else in the distance, another sign of danger, and he motioned. Larshon swept down toward that area, reaching another clearing where the signs of destruction and devastation were far too evident.

  Much like the last time, Fes climbed from Larshon’s back, making his way around the clearing. It seemed a similar size to the last, and much like before, the trees had been battered down, pressed into the ground, making it seem as if they had been thrown down by some enormous creature. There was no sign of fire. No flame, and the ground had no evidence of charring, nothing that would indicate what might have come through here.

  “Fes?”

  He turned to Jayell, frowning.

  “Have you noticed anything about the last two places like this?”

  “Other than the fact that they have completely destroyed these sections of the forest?”

  “There’s that, but it’s something more than that. Look at their size.”

  Fes scanned the destroyed section of the forest but still didn’t detect what it was that she was trying to point out to him.

  “They are the same size.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Not just the same size, but the exact same size. As far as I can tell, they are identical. In the last one, I tried to get a sense of scale, thinking that the size of the destruction might indicate how many troops were involved, but this one is essentially the same.”

  “Essentially, or it is the same?”

  She looked around before shrugging. “I don’t know that it matters. Either way, the level of destruction here is impressive, even for the Damhur.”

  “Do you think they are the same?” he asked the dragon.

  Larshon growled softly and then leaped into the air, leaving Fes and Jayell alone. He circled higher and higher, eventually growing small enough that Fes couldn’t make out any features of the dragon. Through the connection between them, he was able to determine that the dragon was able to see him, but little more than that.

  “This unsettles me,” Jayell said.

  “The destruction, or is it something more?”

  “It’s more about the symmetry.”

  Fes turned his attention from the sky, looking over at Jayell. “Why the symmetry?”

  “Symmetry is unnatural, Fes, at least on a scope like this.”

  “This is a circle, Jayell.”

  “And perfect circles like this are unusual. Look at these trees,” she said, guiding him to the edge of the clearing. She motioned to one of the nearest trees. “What do you see?”

  Fes made a circuit around the trunk. It was large enough that he would have had to stretch to wrap his arms around it, but not much larger than that. There were considerably more impressive trees in other places that he had visited. “I see a tree. The trunk is a circle, Jayell.”

  “It is, but not a perfect circle. Cut off a branch, and I imagine you would find there are irregularities. It’s circular, but that is not the same.” She started away from him, heading toward the center of the clearing. As she went, she counted off her steps until she crossed the entirety of the clearing. She followed the perimeter of the clearing for another dozen steps and then started back across, once again counting out her steps. She did this several times, and each time it was the same.

  “I don’t know what point you’re getting at,” he said.

  “I’m not really sure, either. Whatever happened here was confined to a specific space.”

  The dragon descended, landing with a blast of air and heat near them. He turned his head toward Fes before focusing on Jayell. “She is right. They are the same size.”

  “The same as in similar or the same as in the same?”

  “They are the same.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The dragon growled.

  Fes raised his hands, stepping away and laughing. “It seems that you are sure.” He turned, looking around the clearing. “I still don’t have any idea what any of this means. We haven’t gotten to the Asharn yet, so we don’t even know if there’s anything there to be concerned about.”

  “No, but these patterns continue throughout the forest,” the dragon said.

  What would it mean for them to be replicated like that? More than that, Fes had to wonder if perhaps they headed toward the Asharn, or if that were only coincidence. If coincidental, then it still was unpleasantly uncomfortable.

  He climbed back on Larshon’s back, hurriedly getting into position, and waited as Jayell climbed on behind him. As they took to the air, Jayell twisted behind him, swiveling in place as she strained to try and see what existed below them. Fes followed the direction of her gaze, trying to take in what she might have observed, but couldn’t come up with anything. Whatever was down there, whatever strangeness had caused these circles, he didn’t know.

  As Larshon had said, the circles repeated, a steady pattern one after the other, to the point where it almost looked as if something had stomped its way through the forest on massive feet.

  The trees grew higher the further they went over the forest. As the trunks stretched toward the sky, Fes prepared for when they would reach the Asharn, ready for the moment that he could settle down on one of their platforms and find the rest of the Asharn, but there was no sign of them.

  “Where are the other dragons?” Jayell said, her voice barely carrying over the sound of the wind whistling around them.

  Fes looked around. There should be other dragons. There had been dozens that had been freed, all of them restored from the dragonglass sculptures, and they would have been flying freely in these lands, but why were they not here? They would have gone to the Asharn, using that to ensure their safety, the same way that they would have gone to the Dragon’s Eye. The only other dragons he had observed had been when Larshon had flown off with them.

  “Where are the others?”

  “There are many places they could have gone,” Larshon said.

  “That sounds to me like you don’t know.”

  “I do not keep track of where all the dragons have gone,” Larshon said.

  “Why not?”

  “We are dragons. We do not need to keep track of one another.”

  “I’ve seen how the dragons like to slide together.”

  “We do enjoy finding the currents.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Larshon?”

  “I have traveled with you long enough that it makes it difficult for me to know what the others have done.”

  They reached a point in the forest where Fes would’ve expected to have found the Asharn. There was no sign of the platform. There was only another strange circle of destruction.

  He tapped on Larshon, and they descended to the ground, giving Fes an opportunity to look around, to stare at the forest. The damage here was far more extensive than it had been in other places, but at the same time, the circle was nearly the same size—if it wasn’t identical. Trees had been trampled, stomped down and forced into the ground, leaving nothing but the memory of what had once been here. There was no sign of charring or fire, no sign of Deshazl magic, nothing that would explain what had taken place.

  A strange blue glowing around the edge of the clearing caught his attention, and he headed over to it. When he reached it, he paused, leaning down, and his breath caught.

  Asharn.

  Fes ran his fingers through the liquid, feeling the strange sensation and the way that it tingled along his skin.

  “What is it?” Jayell asked, approaching from behind him.

  He held up his hand, showing her the Asharn as it glowed along his fingers. “This had to be the heart of the Asharn.”

  He looked up, staring toward the sky, toward what had once been a dense canopy arcing overhead, creating a space of safety and a place the Asharn had called home for centuries. He had barely spent any time within their city, but he had been there enough that he understood how it had been a place of safety and sanctity to their people.

  And now it was gone.

  What had happened here?

  There had to be some evidence of the city remaining, didn’t there?

  He looked at the nearby trees, and high in the overhead branches, he saw his first evidence of the remains of the Asharn city. Drawing on his Deshazl magic, Fes jumped, power pushing him forward, propelling him into the air, and he reached the peak of one of the nearby trees, clinging to it as he looked around.

  There were the remains of a platform, and he crawled out onto it, looking to see whether there were others. From here, the clearing took on a strange appearance. He recognized the symmetry that had troubled Jayell. What bothered him was the fact that there was no sense of what had caused this. It would be easier for him if this had been destruction triggered by dragons or by magic, but he saw no sign of either. More troubling was the fact that there were no signs of the Asharn.

  What had happened to the people here?

  Fes jumped from tree to tree, managing to reach the various platforms that had been set up, finally pausing when he had made a complete circuit of the clearing. As he went, he came across no others. There was simply no sign of them.

  There had to be something here, some evidence of what had happened to the people who had once called this place home. Where had they gone?

  As he stood staring down, he saw nothing that could help him understand. More than that, he saw nothing that would tell him that the people had died. As far as he could tell, they had just vanished. And if they had vanished, the one explanation that made any sort of sense, though troublesome, was the possibility that they had been Called.

  The Asharn had collected those Deshazl with significant abilities. Could the Damhur have come after them because of that? Had they discovered where to find the Asharn because of the dragons?

  He looked up at the sky. It would explain why Valenahr had been so arrogant about the likelihood of his safety. He hadn’t feared Fes at all.

  Could they already be too late?

  He didn’t think that the Damhur had managed to Call the Asharn and the dragons, but where had they gone?

  Jumping back to the ground, he joined Jayell. “The city is up there, but there is nothing else. There’s no sign of what happened here.”

  “I think that’s been troubling me, too. I keep expecting to find bodies but hate the fact that I feel that way.”

  “I keep thinking the same thing.”

  “What does it mean that we haven’t found them? Could they have been Called?”

  Fes breathed out heavily, scanning the clearing. “I don’t know. We need to keep looking to see if there is any sign of them.” He turned his attention to Larshon. “Can you see movement through the branches?”

  “Most of the time,” he said.

  “Why only most of the time?”

  “There are times when it is more difficult for me to do. This forest is dense, and there is something about it that makes it occasionally difficult.”

  “Could it be the Asharn flowing through here?”

  Larshon growled softly. “I do not know.”

  They didn’t have answers, but they needed to find them, and to do so, they would need to take to the air once again. If they couldn’t come up with those answers, then he would need to consider another way of discovering what had happened. Fes believed that the Damhur were responsible. Regardless of what else might have taken place, they were the only ones who were motivated to destroy the Asharn.

  As they ascended, Fes made a point of staring around them, watching the forest itself as they wound higher and higher into the sky. He couldn’t shake the sense that there was something he was missing, and it had to do with more than just the destruction of the Asharn.

  Strangely, the pattern of circles continued through the forest, and as they flew, Fes guided Larshon to trail them, going from one to another, almost as if the circles were leading them somewhere.

  It took him a moment to realize that they were leading him in a circle.

  Fes frowned. In the distance, he could feel the pull of the Dragon’s Eye.

  Why would they be leading in a circle, and more than that, why would they be leading in a circle around the Dragon’s Eye?

  Fes followed the trail, watching as they went, worried that perhaps there was something to the pattern that mattered, but he didn’t detect anything. If there was something, he didn’t understand it.

  As they flew, they neared the shoreline in the distance. Beyond there lay the ocean, and beyond that would be the empire. As they started to turn, the dragon rolled off to the side.

  Fes nearly tumbled from his perch on the dragon, and had he not been holding on, he would have fallen.

 

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