The Chaos Rises (Elemental Academy Book 6)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He held them out, focusing on himself, on the elements within him, and strained, searching for that sense of stirring. If he could find it, maybe he could be able to discover what was approaching.

  It wasn’t moving blindingly fast, though it was moving toward them steadily.

  As he focused through the bondars, there was nothing.

  Not only nothing. It was an absence.

  He reached outward again, thinking there would have to be some way to determine what they were picking up on, but the more he focused, the harder it was to find it.

  “I don’t think we should remain here,” Ferrah said.

  Tolan stared into the distance, watching as that movement continued toward them.

  Strangely, he wasn’t terrified. He was nervous, but his nervousness came from a different place. If it was an elemental, didn’t he have a responsibility to try to connect to it?

  “Tolan!”

  Ferrah grabbed his hand and they ran.

  Every so often, Tolan glanced behind him, noting the way the swirling lines of energy surrounded everything, drawing him forward. Would they be able to outrun whatever was coming? He didn’t know if it was even going to be possible.

  All he knew was that they were racing as quickly as they could, moving away from the creature behind them.

  The landscape in front of them began to change.

  It was still rocky and bleak, but now it began to climb.

  It took more effort on their part, and they raced forward, hurrying across the rock.

  Every so often, Tolan would pause, look behind him, and see the swirling evidence of movement. It looked like heat shimmering from the ground, but it was a shimmering heat that moved toward them.

  Ferrah didn’t make any attempts at looking behind her, almost as if she didn’t want to see what was approaching.

  Tolan did what he could, continuing to try to reach for the ability to shape, trying to discover if there was something here that he could draw upon.

  If he could find a way to shape, maybe he could help if this was an elemental. And even if it wasn’t, having the ability to shape might allow him to deter whatever creature was pursuing them. And again, whatever creature was able to survive out on the waste would be powerful, probably something they had never seen before.

  Ferrah paused to take a drink, and Tolan gave her a moment to rest, long enough for her to take another sip from the waterskin. “I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep this up,” she said.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “That we find a place where we can hide.”

  Tolan looked around. There wasn’t any place where they could hide. It was a bleak and empty landscape, and wide open. They had passed beyond the places where the fingers of rock erupted from the ground, giving them no chance to find a place they could use.

  He reached for his sword, unsheathing it. As Ferrah had suggested, he wasn’t a swordsman. Not skilled in any way when it came to fighting—at least with a weapon like this. That wasn’t the point. The sword was a bondar.

  As he ran, he focused on his shaping ability, searching for some way to connect to that part of himself, looking for nothing more than a stirring of energy that had to be within him. He had planned on being able to find that power. It had to be there.

  It was there, deep within him.

  The problem was trying to unleash it here. Within the waste, it was almost as if there was something trying to restrict him from reaching it.

  He skittered to a stop.

  “Tolan?” Ferrah asked.

  He shook his head and focused. Could that be it?

  There was a sense of something trying to prevent him from reaching his shaping ability, and he had experienced something like that before. It was different, though. When he had been in the library within the Academy, there had been a restriction to his shaping, but there had been restriction from others attempting to shape as well.

  And in this place, that restriction was different.

  But could he find his way past it?

  There had to be some way to dig deeper within himself, to find that source of shaping energy. He held onto the sword, focusing on it and on everything within him. When he did, he thought the faint sense of stirring deep within him was there.

  “Whatever is coming is getting closer,” Ferrah said.

  “If I can reach for shaping…”

  “No one can shape in the waste,” she said.

  “No one can shape the element bonds in the waste,” he said.

  “I don’t understand how that’s different.”

  “It is.”

  The sense of shaping and drawing upon that power was different. All he had to do was find that stirring deep within himself, but he had no idea if he was going to be able to draw it out.

  He took a deep breath, trying to steady his breathing, trying to focus on various natures of the elements around him, knowing they were here. They had to be here.

  It wasn’t just that they were here. They were within himself.

  He didn’t need to know the shaping signature of the land. All he needed was to know the shaping signature of himself.

  That was the key.

  If he could use that, if he could understand it, he might be able to draw upon that energy, that power, and might be able to free himself somehow from all of this.

  What he needed to do was find a way beyond that restriction, a way beyond the barrier trying to hold him back. If he could do that, he could find that edge, and then he would be able to unleash it.

  The energy was there. The connection was there.

  Tolan took a deep breath and plunged deeper, focusing on that sensation, focusing on everything he could, that connection to himself and the shaped sense.

  Reaching deep within him toward the stirring sense, Tolan plunged into it.

  The sword began to vibrate.

  He opened his eyes and looked into the distance.

  As Ferrah had said, there did come that shimmering and shifting, and it was far closer than it had been before. He pointed the sword.

  “Tolan?”

  “I can feel it,” he said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I am not really sure.”

  He held out the sword but hesitated.

  He had no idea what was coming, and no idea what creature was making its way toward him, only that there was something. Even though he was terrified, there was no point in attacking until he knew.

  He waited.

  He held onto that sense within him, focusing on each of the elements. They were there.

  Could he use spirit?

  Even that seemed to be within him, though it was deeper, a pool of some sort of energy buried far within him, almost at his core. If he could reach for each of those elements… they could use the warrior shaping he could travel upon. They wouldn’t be trapped here.

  He grabbed onto Ferrah, holding her close, waiting.

  “What happens when this creature attacks?” she asked.

  “I think we aren’t trapped here any longer,” he said.

  “How are we not trapped? It took us the better part of two days to reach this far into the waste.”

  “I think I can use the warrior shaping.”

  “Think? You’re risking an awful lot on the possibility you might be able to do something,” she said.

  He was, and he hated the idea he would put her in any sort of danger on the off-chance he might be able to figure something out, but at the same time, he thought he needed to.

  “Until we know what we’re dealing with, I don’t want to attack.”

  “This is a creature of the waste!”

  “A creature we’ve never seen before, and something that might simply need our help.” That the creature had come following his use of elemental energy couldn’t be a coincidence. And if that were the case, then he would have to find some way of helping it, wouldn’t he?

  If there was something he could do, some way
he could help the creature, then he would need to do so. When he had worked with elementals before, he had done so by shaping spirit, trying to communicate with them… and maybe there was some way to do that now.

  Tolan reached to shape, knowing it was a risk.

  If he used too much energy now, it was possible he wouldn’t have enough to shape them back to Terndahl if it came down to it. If he tried everything now, it was possible they would be trapped here, and there would be no way to return.

  But if this was an elemental…

  The shimmering heatwave was nearly upon them.

  Tolan held onto the sword, preparing a shaping through it. He focused on the various shapings he knew, thinking of the ones he had learned in his various classes within the Academy, but it was the ones he hadn’t learned there that he thought would be the most effective.

  He shifted his type of shaping, focusing more on spirit.

  As it swept away from him, he held his breath, worried he wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t fast enough, and then the shaping exploded from the end of the sword.

  He waited to see if anything would come from it.

  The shaping diffused into that swirling energy, but there was nothing beyond it.

  Could he push more energy into it?

  Tolan pushed the shaping out, sending it sweeping away from him. It was spirit, but he added a hint of each of the elements, hoping in doing so, he would find a way to connect to whatever was approaching.

  Something rebounded within the shaping.

  Tolan was aware of it, but didn’t have any idea what it was or why it should be out there. There had to be some way to know what it was, but as he continued to push, he wasn’t entirely sure.

  His strength began to wane.

  Tolan glanced over at Ferrah, who was watching him. Was she even aware of anything he was doing? Did she have any knowledge of the nature of the power he was drawing upon, or was the waste enough of a separation that it kept her from having any idea of what was taking place?

  If he used all his energy, then any chance of getting them back through one of the warrior shapings was going to be lost. Tolan sent one more blasting into that strange, shimmering cloud.

  When he did, he focused everything he could, using every bit of his energy, every bit of the knowledge he had of the various elements, and he mixed with the spirit shaping a desire to connect and to communicate. He had used that spirit shaping before to reach the elementals.

  On a whim, he traced out a pattern in the ground, mixing with several others using the energy of the runes, and he pushed the shaping through that, trying to increase what he was able to draw.

  There came a stirring from it.

  Tolan’s breath caught.

  A stirring suggested there was definitely an elemental there. He pushed.

  All he wanted was to try to understand; all he wanted was to find some way of connecting, communicating, and the more he pushed, the more certain he was that the connection was out there.

  He sent more and more away from him, forcing everything he had.

  And then he felt it pull on him.

  Tolan had never had that happen before, but now it was beginning to drain him, as if whatever was out there was sucking off his shaping energy.

  And this time, it wasn’t drawing from the element bond; it was drawing from him. The power he had been using had been coming from himself, not from anything else.

  He tried to cut off what he was doing, to separate himself, but the energy continued to be siphoned away, almost as if it had full awareness of him.

  Had he formed a connection? He had been trying to, but he hadn’t thought he had been successful. The more he pushed, the more he had to wonder. And if he was successful, then what would that mean for him? Did it mean he was going to lose control of this?

  There was more energy. It was all coming from him, and he had to hold onto it. He had to find some way to fight it, but Tolan didn’t know how or what it was going to take.

  And the more he pushed, the more he strained against it, the more certain he was that he was going to have to fight, but he feared it was already too late.

  He reached for Ferrah.

  Connecting to her wouldn’t do anything to him, but maybe…

  He sank to his knees and plunged the sword down into the ground, trying to lean on it for support, but the more he strained for that, the harder it was to stay upright.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  As he did, the last of his energy was drained from him and he collapsed, blacking out.

  11

  The sun baked down on him, hot and burning. There came a sense of color around the edge of his vision and a stirring of wind, enough that he had to believe it was something real, but Tolan wasn’t entirely sure if it was.

  What happened?

  He tried to sit up, but it was difficult to do so, and he looked around, searching for anything that might give him an explanation, but there wasn’t anything there.

  A hand was on him. He fought for a moment before remembering he was here with Ferrah. When he blinked open his eyes, he met hers.

  “There you are,” she whispered.

  A water bottle was brought to his mouth, and he took a sip. Everything within him hurt. He tried to ignore it, tried to move, but everything seemed to pound through him.

  Taking a deep breath, he looked around, focusing on the rest of the waste. They were out in the middle of the open, the sun beating down on them, and he tried to get up but there was no way to do so.

  “What happened?” he whispered.

  His voice was hoarse, and he barely managed to get the words out.

  “I was hoping you might be able to tell me,” she said.

  “I don’t really know,” he said. “All I know is that…”

  He wasn’t even aware of what had happened. The shaping energy had been pulled off him. He remembered that.

  “What happened to the creature?” he asked.

  “It’s gone.”

  “It’s gone?”

  “After you fell, the creature disappeared.”

  And here Tolan had thought he was trying to shape the creature, that he was going to connect to it, and yet he wasn’t even sure if that had been successful. All he knew was that he had collapsed.

  Because of what he had done, they had given up any opportunity to return to Terndahl easily. Of course, they hadn’t intended to return to Terndahl. They wanted to cross the waste, find what his mother planned, and stop the tainted Convergence if they could.

  “Do you think you can stand?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  It wasn’t even standing that was his greatest concern. He was more concerned about what else had happened to them, the other things he might have to deal with, and whether or not he would even be able to shape again.

  If the creature had truly siphoned off his ability, did that mean he would have no more? Its sudden disappearance suggested whatever it was doing was finished, which meant perhaps Tolan was finished.

  He took a deep breath and looked around, trying to make out everything in the clearing but the shimmers of color at the edge of his vision made it difficult. It was different than the bright sunlight beaming down on the waste. It was different than the rock radiating heat. The shimmers of color almost let him make out something that wasn’t there.

  A hallucination. He was certain that was what it was, and equally certain it was tied to what he had done. And if that was the case, what he had done would keep him from being able to get his shaping abilities back.

  Tolan looked all around, searching everything around them, and took another drink of water. The first thing he had to do was try to get his strength back, and then he would have to figure out if he could reach for his shaping energy again. And if he couldn’t, it was possible the creature had torn away his power.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Ferrah asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure what it was. I was
shaping”—she arched a brow and he hurried on—“using the power I could detect within myself. I was able to reach for a shaping connection to myself, then used the sword as a bondar, almost as if I used it upon myself.”

  “And it didn’t work against the creature?”

  “At first, I thought it might, and the more I focused on shaping, the more I thought I could connect to it.” He had a memory of the reverberation, the echoing sensation reminding him of what he had encountered, the way he thought he might be able to get the creature to respond to him, but then there had been a change in it. “I don’t even know if the creature can be stopped, at least not with my shaping.”

  “I don’t remember ever seeing anybody pass out from a shaping.”

  “I…” He met Ferrah’s eyes. She needed to know what had happened to him. “I think the creature began to draw off my shaping ability.”

  “It did what?”

  Tolan focused on the various elements, thinking about them, but he was far too tired and sore to try to shape them again. “I think it was trying to draw on my shaping ability. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but it was feeding, or it seemed to be.”

  “How was it feeding?”

  He shook his head. “Again, I don’t really know. All I know is that I was trying to shape, and as I was doing so, the creature was pulling on that energy.”

  “And that’s when you passed out.”

  He nodded. “After it did that, I couldn’t keep awake. I tried…”

  “What about now?”

  “Now I can’t tell whether there’s any way for me to shape anymore. I can’t detect anything,” he said.

  He wasn’t sure if he needed to rest more and regain his strength, or if it had been truly taken from him. If there was some creature with the ability to feed on shapers, to draw off that energy, then they needed to find the creature and learn about what it was doing. And why.

  “Something like that might explain more about the waste,” Ferrah said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He closed his eyes, focusing on the energy he had detected, the way he had used his shaping, and thought about whether there was anything he could better understand. It seemed to him there should be something he could utilize, but the more he thought about it, the harder it was to know. “There was power there, but nothing else about it that made sense.”