Trenton and Kallista should have come here on their own. Maybe they hadn't killed as many dragons as Angus and Simoni had. But killing dragons hadn't been the point of leaving Discovery-at least not all of it. No matter how many of the creatures they killed, there were hundreds more ready to take their place. Maybe thousands. This trip was supposed to be about finding the source of the dragons, not seeing how many skulls they could collect along the way. For a moment, he wondered how his mother and father were. He'd intentionally forced himself not to think about his family since leaving Discovery. Part of it was to avoid feeling homesick. When he and Kallista first left to search for her father, Trenton had been thrilled to explore a world he'd been told was destroyed. And it had been exciting, seeing sunlight for the first time, feeling rain, the trees, the ocean-being free to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Only the longer he was gone, the more he missed things he'd taken for granted: eating with his parents, hanging out at the park with friends, waiting for his father to come home from the mines. Although he wouldn't admit it to anyone, he even missed working on the farms of the food production level. But there was another reason he'd been trying not to think about home. After Trenton and his friends left, the citizens of Discovery had sealed the entrance to the mountain using explosives and heavy equipment. They'd kept a small vent open in case any outside humans came looking for help, but they needed to protect themselves from the dragons outside. Dragons had attacked Seattle, ripping the city to shreds and killing everyone. The only person who might have escaped was Kallista's father, Leo Babbage, and that wasn't a sure thing. The day they found Seattle in ruins, they'd also discovered that the charred remains of the Whipjack airship were gone. They hoped that meant Leo had managed to repair the ship enough to get it in the air and had escaped the city before the dragons attacked. Kallista firmly believed that if he had, he would have headed south in search of the origins of the dragons. It was clear the attack on Seattle had involved several dragons working together. Had it been revenge for the dragons killed outside Discovery? For the weapons of war Trenton had helped the Whipjacks create? Or simply because the people were there and the dragons could kill them? Ander, a friend of Trenton's who had been killed outside Seattle, had been a member of the Order of the Beast, a group who believed dragons could talk to each other as well as to humans. Trenton didn't accept that last idea at all. But what if dragons could communicate with each other? At least a couple of the dragons they fought outside the entrance to Discovery had escaped. If the dragons attacked Seattle for revenge, wouldn't they attack Discovery as well? If Trenton and his friends couldn't locate the source of the dragons and come up with a way to stop them, it might only be a matter of time until the dragons worked together to dig their way into the mountain and kill everyone like they did in Seattle. Excerpted from Embers of Destruction by J. Scott Savage All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
