Page 24 of Dragon’s Rebel

Rebel had her head in her hands, muttering something about sorcerers and turning her back for one minute, and this was what happened.

Thorne tried to keep the discussion on track. So it was just Corwyn, by himself?

“Him and his giant flying ostrich thing,” Tempest said.

“A baraka,” Blaze put in. “Which means… well, giant flying ostrich thing.”

“They’re supposed to be extinct,” Tyr said. “Where the hell did he get one?”

Who cares? How did he even get in here? Thorne demanded. This place has been dragon-warded for hundreds of years. There’s no way a human sorcerer should be able to get in.

“I know,” Zane said. “I checked all the wards, and so did Blaze. They don’t even seem to have been tampered with. I don’t know how he did it.”

“Or why he did it,” Tyr said. “Why mess with the water supply? What was he trying to do?”

“Poison us, obviously,” Rebel said.

“But how?” Blaze asked. “I didn’t even know you could poison a dragon. They’re immune to practically everything.”

Thorne suppressed a shiver. It was just luck that Tempest had caught him. There could have been poison in the water right now.

“I don’t know,” Zane said thoughtfully. “Poison doesn’t really seem to be his style.”

“Isn’t it?” Blaze said. “He hid inside a fucking idol for centuries, poisoning people’s minds and hearts. This isn’t that much different.”

“Or maybe he doesn’t have the power to confront us directly,” Tyr added. “We did cut him off from Vyrkos. That was his major source of power.”

Zane said, “Then why not try to get back in the tomb, connect back up with Vyrkos? Why go after us?”

Thorne had no clue. He hated having no clue.

Tempest said, “Maybe he doesn’t want Vyrkos to rise. After all, when he took Silas’s body, he could have tried to destroy the Dragonfly Seal. But he didn’t. He just left.”

Thorne sighed in frustration, almost setting an office chair on fire. That makes no sense. If he doesn’t want to break Vyrkos out, what the fuck does he want?

“Maybe he wants to take over the world himself,” Rebel said, raising her head from her hands. “Maybe he wants an impenetrable fortress of his very own, filled to the brim with gold and magical artifacts, with a bonus computer network that’s tapped into every government on this planet—and the dark net—for when he makes his way into the twenty-first century.”

She looked around the room. “Face it, it’s an evil sorcerer all-you-can-steal buffet in here—and Corwyn knows it. Didn’t he work with the Guardians, a gazillion years ago?”

The room went dead silent. All the dragons looked at each other.

“Oh, hell,” Tyr said. “That’s how he did it.”

Zane closed his eyes and dropped his head back, shaking it in disbelief.

“What?” Blaze asked.

Tyr said, “Corwyn worked with the first Guardians. Why wouldn’t he know how to bypass the wards? Hell, he may have even helped create them.”