A Siren's Crown (Book Two in the APK Trilogy)

(2) The Kingdom of Dragons

"Unabonan!" I cried once again, before I regained my sense and probed tentatively into his mind with my own.

What is wrong?

My mental words hit a wall of fury and bounced off with no impact at all. The great dragon howled with rage and let loose a mighty burst of blue flame that singed the air and parted the clouds like cobwebs as we plowed through them.

Beginning to panic now, I threw out a thought into the air, desperately calling for anyone, but as I suspected, we were too far away from the palace and I was not practiced enough for my thoughts to reach that far. 

With more force, I rammed against the dragons mental wall but it was like fire, scorching and hot and I couldn't find a way through.

Unabonan!

Stolen! His voice howled into my mind, whipping and lashing at the inside of me and making me scream in agony.

Stolen! Thief! Kill! Tear! Rip! Shred! KILL!

The words were like cannonballs, each one smashing its way into my mind and burying themselves into my brain. I let go of his back so I could cradle my head in my hands as a few tears squeezed themselves from the corners of my eyes. Heat engulfed me and I knew we had just flown through his blue flame again. 

Words continued to slash through me and I felt his mind slowly taking over mine, engulfing me in his anger. My eyes snapped open and for a moment I was the dragon, my vision was tinted with red and my goal was to get ... I had to get somewhere as fast as possible ... It was horribly, terribly urgent and nothing else mattered ...

"NO!"

The ferocious roar ripped me out of his mind, pulled him away from me and it took me a moment to realize that the sound came from my own mouth. I squeezed my eyes shut and when I opened them I was still seeing red but I was on the back of the dragon, I wasn't the one flying. I gathered all of my focus and aimed my thought at the back of his head, imagining it as an arrow, deadly and sharp, it would pierce straight into his mind. I felt something rising inside of me and I held the feeling for a moment as it gathered strength. 

And then I let the word go.

Stop.

It was released with such power that I felt myself jolt backwards slightly and for a moment I could have sworn I saw a golden shimmer in the air that headed straight for Unabonan's skull. 

The wall of fury shattered like glass at the tip of the golden arrow but I was almost thrown straight back out by the mere alienness of his mind, thoughts rushed past me at impossible speeds, colors that I had never imagined appear before me, sights that I would never see presented themselves to me and then were gone in a second. 

Then it all disappeared, it was gone, every door shut in a second, every thought sealed away and I was left in the middle of what appeared to be a room made of glass. The walls were shaking slightly, causing beams of light to dance in every direction.

Vanima.

The voice reverberated off the walls and one of the glass panels smashed leaving a gaping black hole. The tiny shards seemed to take an awfully long time to reach the ground, the tinkling sound was drawn out and exaggerated to the point where I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears in order to block out the noise. 

Vanima. Something terrible has happened.

His ancient voice was so heartbreaking that I fell to my knees as more glass panels shattered around me.