Into the Dragon's Maw (The Spoken Books Uprising, #5) by D. T. Kane

Author:D. T. Kane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epic fantasy, magic spells, epic fantasy for adults, magic spells books, fantasy adventure fiction, epic fantasy books, dragon books for adults
Publisher: Eremite Publishing
Published: 2023-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

“IF YOU HADN’T INTERFERED, I’d have been just fine!” Sonne shouted.

It’d been nearly two hours since their run-in with the Fire Breather and the young Dreka Dau was still going on about it. Baz was beginning to think Sonne would have happily traded his life if it would have saved his precious dragon snare. Sonne must have said at least a dozen times that it had taken hundreds of hours to make.

But Baz was still only half listening to the boy. He couldn’t shake the sense of despair being entangled in that net had caused him. Baz was so distressed that, when Eromér saw him, he’d stayed in their camp rather than return the skies to patrol for other Fire Breathers. Baz was so distracted that the Book Dragon had needed to heat the stones for cooking. Now, Eromér lay curled just out of the stones’ glow in the late evening gloom. Baz rested against him, feeling slightly better within the warm embrace of the fur that covered the Book Dragon’s neck.

“Perhaps, young hunter,” Rox suddenly said, right before Sonne launched into another tirade about how this was supposed to be his Great Hunt and Baz should follow his directions, “you should save your anger for another time. Baztian is not well, and your words do nothing to aid him.”

It appeared that Sonne was nearly ready to snap at Rox—clear evidence of just how immature he was—but then he glanced at Baz and closed his mouth, frowning.

“How could you stand carrying that thing?” Baz asked.

“The dragon snare?”

Baz nodded, unable even to speak its name aloud.

“What are you talking about?” Sonne asked. This time he did snap. “They hardly weigh anything at all.”

Baz gave an exasperated grunt. “That’s not what I mean! The soul-sucking hopelessness. It was like, I don’t know, staring at a loved one’s grave or something. No. Worse than that. Staring at a loved one’s grave and knowing you put them there.”

Sonne stared at him like he’d just announced that stones could speak.

“It is called the Melancholia. The Melancholia.”

Baz looked up at the Book Dragon.

“In my lifetime I have twice felt it. Felt it. Once long ago, and then just a few days prior, when the Dreka Dau captured me. Captured me.”

Sudden indignation bubbled up inside Baz and he rose to his feet. “That’s how you made Eromér feel when you threw that accursed net on him?”

Sonne’s eyes widened and he held up his hands. “I don’t understand. What is the Book Dragon talking about? Melancholia?”

“It is the condition an Orator suffers upon losing his or her power to call upon the elements. The elements.”

“Oh,” Sonne said. “That explains it, then. Most of the Dreka Dau don’t have elemental powers. Without Spoken Books, few of us have developed any over the past hundred years. My grandfather is one of the last who has the skill.”

“It is all right, young Orator. Young Orator. The Dreka Dau did not know what their snares did to me. To me.”

“That’s not an excuse!” Baz snapped.

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