The Elements Bond (Elemental Academy Book 7)

by D. K. Holmberg

  There was only the emptiness of the waste.

  There had to be something here. The elementals had survived in the waste, even if they hadn’t thrived. They had lived here, which suggested to Tolan that there had to be something. The key would be in understanding what it was and figuring out just why they had come here.

  They were trying to hide from something. The buildings suggested they’d been here for a little while, long enough that they had made a home of it.

  The wind shaping carried them, and in the distance, Tolan was able to make out the curved domes that formed the buildings.

  He held onto a sense of spirit, pushing outward with it. There wasn’t much he was able to draw upon, the strength within him having faded from drawing on the elements and the elementals as much as he had, but he didn’t detect anything.

  When they landed within the village, he did so cautiously, concerned that there might be something here that might attack them. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be something dangerous lurking.

  “What do you think we’re going to encounter?” Ferrah asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel anything here.”

  The orb pulsed.

  That was strange. It was almost as if the elemental was trying to escape, or perhaps he was aware they were here. This was the elemental’s home.

  It was a strange place for a wind elemental to call home, though it was equally strange for an earth and a water elemental. There was nothing here other than a sense of isolation. The elementals would have known that, and they would have been separated from their power.

  But then, they also would’ve been separated from those who could do harm to them.

  Like the fire elemental that had attacked Tolan.

  That attack had been vicious and vigorous enough he was lucky to have survived it. Were it not for the wind elemental, Tolan didn’t know he would have been able to counter it.

  There had to be some evidence of the attack, but given that it was the waste, the rock was dry and cracked, leaving little else around, and he couldn’t help but feel as if there was nothing.

  It was almost as if the attackers had cleared any evidence of their presence.

  Why would they even care?

  That was the piece Tolan didn’t really understand, but it was something he had to look into. There had to be some reason for the attackers to be concerned about someone recognizing they were there.

  Could there be others who were working with the elementals?

  He would have to see.

  Pushing outward, focusing on spirit along with the other elements, he didn’t detect anything. If there was any other sense out here, he couldn’t feel it.

  He held onto that awareness, continuing to focus on it, and looked around.

  Now they were here, he wanted to take more time and explore.

  Did he have enough strength to use a warrior shaping to get inside one of the buildings? A short distance wouldn’t take much energy. It might be valuable for them to better understand what was here, and to better understand just what had taken place. If he could use that shaping, then perhaps they might find some answers.

  The first among them being how long the elementals had been here.

  There was a sense of age here, but when he had been here, it had been occupied by only the three elementals. He took Ferrah by the hand and used his shaping, drawing them into one of the homes.

  When they appeared, he paused. There was always the possibility the shaping would bring them someplace dangerous. He looked around. It was as empty as the first room where he had come around. The walls were bare, nothing but stone beneath him and a curved roof overhead. He didn’t see any sign of a fire, as there had been in the other building, but he saw the remains of a hearth, evidence of something having been here at one time.

  “What is this?” Ferrah asked.

  “As far as I can tell, this is their home. They had me in one of these places when I first awoke, and I realized they lived there.”

  “This isn’t living, Tolan.”

  “Maybe for an elemental it might be.”

  “This is hiding.”

  “Considering the nature of the attack, I can’t blame them for wanting to hide.”

  “Do you think they’ve been here for very long?”

  “Given that they are elementals, they could have created the stone rooms quickly.”

  “I don’t see anything here that suggests any sort of time spent here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at it. If the elementals lived here as you said, there should have been some sign of them.”

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  “Neither do I. There are others like this?”

  Tolan nodded. “Many.”

  “How many do you think you can take me to?”

  “I don’t know. The warrior shaping to travel into here doesn’t take nearly as much strength as traveling much distance.”

  “Let’s try another.”

  They used the shaping to travel to another of the buildings, and it was much like the other. There were bare walls all around, and a sense of disuse to it. Nothing suggested that anybody who had been here had spent much time.

  It was a place to hide, not a place to live.

  He had thought that this was an elemental village, a place where they had lived, but maybe that wasn’t it at all.

  “What do you think this is?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s strange, and I imagine the elementals were here are equally strange, but I get the sense we don’t understand everything.”

  Tolan looked at her. “In the case of what we’ve been dealing with, I could say we don’t understand quite a few things.”

  “Do you detect anything from the Draasin Lord?”

  As they had neared here, Tolan had begun to focus on the Draasin Lord, struggling to see if there would be anything he might be able to come up with to explain what had happened, but there was nothing. He focused on the draasin, thinking through the connection through fire, using a hint of spirit to see if there might be any way to connect to him, but he felt nothing.

  “He’s not there.”

  “He’s a draasin. I’m sure he safe.”

  “I don’t know he is. He warned me to go.”

  “Probably because he knew the danger.”

  Tolan debated how much to share with her. There was that feeling he had from the Draasin Lord when he had connected. In that feeling, he had recognized the fatigue within the Draasin Lord, and Tolan wondered if there might be something within that fatigue to explain what had happened, though he doubted it. What he knew was that the Draasin Lord was growing tired. He could feel it when he was around him, but he could also see it and recognize that the Draasin Lord had served long enough.

  If it was the end of the Draasin Lord’s life, he didn’t deserve an ending like that. He deserved to be free in his final moments, to travel as he wanted, to do whatever a draasin would do.

  He shaped them back out. They visited a few other of the homes, each one no different than the others. By the time they were done, Tolan was growing tired. He thought he might have another shaping left in him, but it wouldn’t be much. It would carry them a short distance, certainly not enough to carry them back out of the waste.

  He took a seat on the ground. The daylight was fading, and as he looked up at the sky, he noticed there was a shimmering across the sun. For a moment, he thought that might be a shaping, some sort of evidence of the elementals utilized to make the effect, but he didn’t think that was the case. As he stared, he thought that perhaps it was little more than a sense of power out there. The heat of the sun. The energy within the waste.

  He leaned back, looking up at the sky. He needed time to recover. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel as if he had that time. That had been the issue he had all along, feeling as if he were battling against the shortage of time.

  Ferrah settled down
to the ground next to him, taking his hand.

  “Can you believe we’re out here?” he asked.

  “I remember the first time I came to the waste. It was during our testing. When all of the first level students were brought out here.” She closed her eyes, smiling softly. “When I did, there was that sudden emptiness. It was like an ache left within me. I could almost imagine nothing of the elements remained.”

  “It was temporary.”

  “It was temporary, but at the same time, it was painful. We were asked to sit out there for no more than an hour.” She opened her eyes, shaking her head with a smile. “An hour. Think about how long you and I have been out over the waste.”

  “I’ve been able to shape out here, though.”

  “You have, and with the orb bondar, I’ve been able to shape, too. It makes it easier, but it doesn’t make it easy, does it?”

  Tolan breathed out. “I remember coming to the waste when I was younger. Situated on the edge of Terndahl as we were, it wasn’t all that far of a walk. The people of Ephra all had some experience in visiting the waste. It was a challenge, but it was also source of pride. We existed where there was nothing.” He snorted. “Now I start to wonder. The waste was designed as a protection of some sort. Think about the way Ephra once had been. It was a place of power. We know that about it. We know the city was once so much more than it is now. Because of that, I wonder if the people who lived there knew what was going to happen over time.”

  “It’s possible,” Ferrah said. “Given what we know of those shapers, it’s possible. Honestly, anything is possible when it comes to those shapers. They knew so much. They were so powerful.”

  “They were powerful, but they also forced the elementals into the bond.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulling the bondar out and setting it on his lap. There was a faint shimmering light to it. It was no longer pulsing, almost as if the elemental had abandoned his attempt to try to escape. That left Tolan feeling guilty, but it was necessary.

  “There are many things I don’t really understand about the elementals. The bond is just one of them.” He leaned back, resting his head on the stone. He was tired and taking a few moments to sleep wasn’t the worst idea. “I think about not just the element bonds, but even something as simple as the wall of portraits. They shaped them in such a way that it allowed us to see something all these years later.”

  “That’s something I wish I could see.”

  “I wish we could all see them. I wish we understood them.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “I can see the images they shaped into there, but understanding them is something quite different. As much time as I have spent wandering those halls, looking at those portraits, I still don’t have any more answers than I ever did.” He smiled, looking over at Ferrah. “They change each time. I wish there were something that would help me understand these elementals.”

  “Maybe there was something there.”

  “The only one that even suggested anything like it was the one that I most recently saw, but even in that one, nothing was clear. It’s almost as if the people of that time had known some secret they wanted to pass on, but they didn’t know how.”

  “Writing wouldn’t work,” Ferrah said.

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “Think about what you know about some of the oldest works within the library. The language changes over time, and with it, so does the people. The terminology. Even such common phrases as what we know. All of it changes and evolves, and over time, you have to learn to adjust to those changes. The language gets lost, and then there isn’t a way to know anything more.”

  “You’re saying they left the portraits as a way for us to understand them?”

  “Possibly. What better way than to create images that could be followed later on?”

  “But we know they left writings.”

  “It’s just a suggestion,” she said. “We want to have something we can attribute to them, and maybe that’s it.”

  Tolan smiled at the idea. That they had known that there would be no other way for them to be remembered left him thinking that perhaps there could and should be something more.

  He breathed in the air all around him, the emptiness he detected, focusing on the waste. Unlike Ferrah, he could shape and didn’t feel nearly as trapped as he might otherwise.

  He focused on everything he could around him, thinking of the energy here, thinking about the power here, and he tried to come up with the reason that the elementals would have come to this place.

  It was isolated. An emptiness existed here. The elementals would be separated, taken away from what they should be able to reach.

  Why would they choose to do so?

  They might not have any other alternative, but they were elementals. They could cross the waste, using the power they possessed, and they could find someplace else.

  It came down to what Ferrah had said. This wasn’t home to them.

  It was never meant to be home to them. This was a place where they could rest. Recover. They used it as a way to prepare.

  Prepare for what?

  The elemental had been fighting. He hadn’t seemed surprised by the suddenness of the attack. What if the elementals knew they were under attack, and they were using this is a place to draw the attackers?

  Could that be why they had brought him to the room?

  Without a warrior shaping, he wouldn’t have been able to escape. Few others would have been able to shape in these homes, either.

  Tolan sat up, looking over at Ferrah. “That’s it.”

  “What is it?”

  “These aren’t homes, not as I had believed.”

  “What you think they are, then?”

  “These are cells.”

  14

  Tolan paced through the village, or the prison, whatever it might be. In doing so, he continued to search for answers, but he already believed he was right. These had to be cells. There wasn’t any other explanation for the purpose behind them. They were far too numerous and far too empty to be anything else.

  Ferrah stayed behind him, trailing along, also examining their surroundings. Tolan wished he had more strength, needing the shaping energy to head toward the buildings, to see what was inside.

  Perhaps that didn’t matter. He was right. He was certain he was right.

  “When we were inside, we realized there was nothing else there.”

  “You said you were able to shape when you first woke.”

  “I was, but how many others would be able to do so?”

  He thought about the difficulty that even the master librarians had. It took time for them to grow accustomed to the emptiness of the waste and realize they were able to shape. It was a belief as much as anything else. Tolan had helped them find that belief. He knew there was a way for them to shape, and so they had shaped.

  What else might there be?

  Instead of looking for evidence of people living here, he looked for evidence of people having been captured here. He didn’t see anything as he paced through here. He looked at the ground, focusing on earth. He didn’t need to shape to use earth sensing. That was all he needed at this point. In order to find that sense, he thought he could draw on that strength, hold onto it, and use what he could detect.

  The wind elemental had been prepared for the possibility of an attack. That had to be the explanation as to why he was there when Tolan had started to suffer.

  Could that have been where the water and earth elemental had gone?

  They had brought him here, thinking he was a prisoner.

  They had separated him from the waste.

  They believed he was dangerous.

  Tolan held onto the orb bondar, focusing on what he could detect within it.

  The elementals were attacking the shapers.

  It was a different sort of attack than the elementals that escaped from the bond within Terndahl. At least there, there was a wild sense to them, a
nd he could explain the reasoning to it. Escaping from the bond was traumatic, and for an elemental that had been trapped within it for as long as they had, there was something beneficial about finally getting free. But these elementals were free, and he recognized they had an intelligence, which suggested to him that there would have to be some other reason to be attacking shapers.

  What would it be?

  His mother. Whoever she served.

  Tolan wandered, still pushing out with earth, focusing on whatever he could detect. There was nothing. He studied the ground. What if there was something tied to wind here?

  Tolan shifted his focus, using the wind and trying not to shape it but to only sense it. As he did, he didn’t find anything within it. It was the same as when he had failed to detect anything within earth. Tolan tried a different approach. What if he used each of the elements, mixing them together?

  It was possible that in doing so, he might be able to find some answer as to why he could pick up on that sense of power here. It was subtle, but as they had been looking around, he felt it as a sense deep within him.

  Ferrah stayed close to him, and her presence pushed on his sense of spirit.

  He glanced back at her, smiling reassuringly, though he knew he wasn’t reassuring her. Given what they had gone through, and knowing what they were going to have to go through again, how could he be reassuring?

  The elementals had brought shapers here to separate them. These cells wouldn’t hold the elementals, so it meant they were trapping humans, those with power over the elements.

  “What have we gotten into?” Tolan whispered.

  Ferrah shook her head, stepping away from him and surveying the ground away from the domed cells.

  Tolan didn’t see anything near there and doubted they would find anything useful, but he followed Ferrah, looking beyond where he had already searched. At this point, all they needed was to find some answer. He had no idea what it would take, and he had no idea what was out there, but he had to see if there was something they might be able to learn.