The Earth Awakens (Elemental Academy Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Keep moving,” Ferrah said.

  Tolan knew that he should be moving, but a part of him wanted to know what was taking place. That part of him wanted to experience the majesty of this power.

  He could feel it. After returning from the waste, the sudden return of his ability to detect shapings was incredible, and he held onto it, clinging to that sense, afraid he’d forget what it felt like.

  Maybe that was why shapers feared going out into the waste.

  Was there anything he could do?

  “We need to help,” he said.

  “Help with what?” Ferrah asked.

  “I don’t know, but the master shapers need us.”

  “We’re students. We’re first-year students,” Jonas said.

  “We are, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have some abilities.”

  As he watched, the master shapers were forced back a step.

  He jerked his arm free from Ferrah and raced forward, taking up a position near the Grand Master. “We can help.”

  The Grand Master had his jaw clenched and glanced over at Tolan before finally nodding. “Any additional power would be helpful. Search for what you feel. Resist it.”

  “How?”

  “There is a connection within you to the elements, Shaper Ethar.” Despite how strained he looked, he sounded far calmer. “Use that connection.”

  “I can only reach fire.”

  “Then counter earth.”

  Tolan gripped the furios and focused on what he could detect. He had felt the earth rumbling first, so finding where that was taking place wasn’t difficult. It rumbled all around them, though now it was in front of him.

  It seemed as if the ground strained, trying to throw them back, pushing them. Almost involuntarily, he took a step backward and realized he wasn’t the only one. The line of master shapers all backed up a step, withdrawing from the power of the shaping.

  As he focused on the rumbling, he used the furios, connecting to fire, feeling the way it surged within him. It came slowly, a fluttering, then it burst out from him.

  Tolan kept his focus on the ground, letting the power of the flame strike it. It seemed to him that his shaping took on the form of hyza, an elemental of fire, but also of earth. Each of his shapings seemed to take on aspects of elemental power, and this was no different. Sometimes, it seemed to him that he was the only one who recognized that. In this case, it was difficult to tell whether it was his shaping that took on the form of an elemental or whether it was more the fact there were elementals that seemed to be attacking him.

  Tolan held onto his shaping, letting that power flow from him. He focused on his intent, using the knowledge they’d learned over the last few months, pushing it against the sense of earth.

  Additional power began flickering near him and he hazarded a glance down the line of master shapers, realizing other students had joined.

  Not all of them. Tolan couldn’t blame those who avoided it—he was just as afraid, only he feared doing nothing more.

  Still, the additional power pushed back against the shaping. It happened slowly—too slowly—and finally, the ground gradually ceased rumbling. The wind began to slow, then shifted directions. The heat dissipated. Only the rain persisted, but it rolled up to the border of the waste before stopping. Tolan continued to hold onto a shaping and realized he might be one of the few who still did.

  He released his connection, and the image of the hyza elemental flickered before disappearing completely. It seemed to him that the elemental—at least the shape of it, as he wasn’t completely convinced it was an elemental—glanced back at him before it disappeared. That had to be his imagination, didn’t it?

  He looked around. Most of the students who had joined the master shapers had collapsed to the ground. Ferrah still stood, and Draln, but the others had sunk to their knees or their backsides, staring out into the waste. The master shapers remained standing, and Tolan wondered if it was a matter of strength that allowed some to stand while others no longer could. That didn’t seem quite right, especially as he didn’t view himself as particularly strong with his shaping, though perhaps it was the fact that he had been shaping through the bondar.

  “Gather the students,” the Grand Master said.

  The master shapers all began to move the students, helping some on the ground to stand while a few needed to be carried. Tolan stared out at the waste and pondered what had just taken place.

  It had been an attack, but why here and why now?

  “Keep moving, Shaper Ethar,” Master Wassa said.

  Tolan glanced over at him. Sweat beaded across his brow, more than he’d ever seen on the man. Worry lines wrinkled his forehead and the corners of his eyes. There was a stoop to his back.

  How much energy had Master Wassa—and the other master shapers—expended in order to stop whatever this had been?

  “What was this?” he asked.

  Master Wassa didn’t answer. He only pushed Tolan to join the other students. Tolan followed, and when he reached Ferrah, he slid his arm under her shoulders, keeping her upright. Jonas stumbled more than Tolan expected he would.

  “What was that?” Ferrah whispered.

  “I don’t know. It felt like a shaping, but there were elementals.” Tolan cast a glance back. The master shapers were all congregated together, and many looked out toward the heart of the waste, though none was shaping. If they were attacked again, Tolan wondered if they would have enough strength to resist it. Could the attack this time have been almost too much?

  “I didn’t think the waste was supposed to have shaping like that,” Jonas said.

  “I didn’t come from the waste. It came from Terndahl,” Ferrah said.

  “It may have attacked us in Terndahl, but I think the first one came from the waste,” Tolan said.

  There was a distinct sense that whatever strange attack he had observed first, the strange rumbling had emanated from the other side of the border of the waste. There was no question in his mind it had come from there. But then, there was also the wind that had gusted in, blasting them with the heat and sand from out in the waste. That had to have been from the other side. It shouldn’t have been possible, not with what they knew about the waste.

  “There’s nothing out there,” Ferrah said.

  “I saw movement when I was out there,” Tolan said.

  She looked up at him, a question in her eyes. It was almost an accusation, the kind of thing that he was far too familiar with from his time in Ephra. It was the same way people had looked at him when his parents had disappeared. It was an accusation that said he sided with the Draasin Lord.

  “I don’t know what it was, and the Grand Master didn’t either,” he said hurriedly, wanting to point out that he hadn’t been alone out there. It hadn’t been his fault, and he didn’t need his friends to believe it somehow had been.

  “What kind of movement?” Ferrah asked, glancing over her shoulder to look back. They were far enough away now that the masters were difficult to make out clearly. Pretty soon, they would be able to shape their way up to the Shapers Path, and from there, they could focus on returning to Amitan and the Academy. It was where they wanted to go. After everything else, Tolan wanted nothing more than to get back to the Academy and resume the normalcy of his studies.

  Since his arrival at the Academy, there hadn’t been any normality. First, there had been the elemental attacks, and then there had been the students who had been injured, and then he had discovered Jory had been a part of it. That wasn’t what time at the Academy was supposed to be like. He was supposed to have a chance to focus and learn—and see if he could reach for various different element bonds.

  “I don’t know. It looked like a shadow, but it moved far faster than any shadow should have been able to move,” he said.

  “If it wasn’t a shadow, then what do you think it was?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. The Grand Master didn’t, either.” The Grand Master hadn’t seen
it.

  “Someone must have released the elementals when we were on the other side of the border,” Jonas said.

  Tolan didn’t want to continue arguing the point, but that wasn’t what he thought about it at all. He didn’t think it had come from their side of the waste. Whatever had happened, it seemed to him that it had come from the other side.

  Only… The other side of the waste was not supposed to have any sort of connection to the element bonds, so how was that even possible?

  He looked ahead. Several of the students had already begun to shape their way up to the Shapers Path. It took a burst of power, and prior to his time in the Academy, Tolan wouldn’t have been able to reach the path on his own. Even now, he wasn’t entirely sure he had the necessary strength, especially after having spent so much of himself. Several of the students must have been in the same situation, as they sat, arms resting on their legs, heads propped up, and as he approached, he saw glazed eyes.

  “Are you able to reach the path?” Tolan asked Ferrah and Jonas.

  Ferrah nodded and then let out a heavy sigh. “I think I can.”

  “I… I don’t know.” Jonas looked from one to the other. “I might need one of the master shapers to help.”

  “I can help you,” Ferrah said. She turned her attention to Tolan. “What about you?”

  “I think I can manage.”

  “If you get off course…”

  “Then I’ll fall.”

  “You could wait.”

  “I think I would like to be above all of this,” he said. Once he was above the ground, it was much easier to hurry along the Shapers Path. There was something about it that expedited movement so that distances didn’t matter. Reaching Amitan would take the better part of the day, but once he was on the Path, he didn’t need to fear the elemental attack.

  Ferrah began to shape, wind and fire swirling around her, lifting her and Jonas up.

  Tolan dipped his hand into his pocket, gripping the furios. Focusing on it, he imagined saa this time, rather than hyza. Each time he connected to the elementals, he imagined a different one, though most of the time, he defaulted to hyza. Saa had a different connection to him, and using that, he was able to launch himself into the air. There was more control within it than there would be had he used hyza. After what he had just done, he wasn’t sure he wanted to draw upon hyza.

  The students lining the Shapers Path overhead gave him a target, and as he rose higher and higher, he realized he hadn’t angled himself quite right.

  He tried to shift the connection, but something pushed against him.

  Great Mother!

  Tolan focused, straining to redirect, but he was going to overshoot the Shapers Path.

  And then something grabbed him. It seemed like a rope of wind wrapped around him and it pulled him, drawing him toward the Shapers Path and Ferrah. When he landed, he released his shaping and let out a shaky breath.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “That was Jonas,” she said.

  Jonas shrugged. “I might not have had enough strength to reach the Shapers Path, but to pull you in doesn’t take a whole lot.”

  Tolan turned his attention to the distance, looking out toward the edge of the waste. From here, it was difficult to see, but the vantage had some benefits. He could make out the boundary, and it was quite clear the way the green grass shifted to brown and then quickly to rock. The waste was bleak, an emptiness, and made him feel as if all he wanted to do was run in the other direction, especially after what they had just gone through.

  There was something else about it though.

  “What do you think of it?” he asked Ferrah.

  “I think I don’t want to return. I can’t believe you grew up so close to it.”

  “It wasn’t like that when I was growing up,” he said.

  “You mean the waste didn’t attack you?”

  “We didn’t spend that much time near it. Something about it seems off, though.”

  “Ever since we came here, something’s seemed off, Tolan,” Ferrah said.

  “This is different.”

  He stared at it, trying to determine what gave him that feeling. Maybe it was simply the fact he had just been attacked out there, or maybe it was that the master shapers still stood, now in something of a line. They were staggered, and from here, Tolan could feel just the beginnings of a shaping and wondered what they were doing and why they felt the need to continue shaping. Was more happening?

  He didn’t think so. There was no shifting wind and no rumbling of the ground, nothing else suggesting the shaping went awry. There was nothing other than the vast emptiness of the waste.

  Why then did he feel as if there was something out there?

  “The border seems different,” Jonas said.

  “What?” Ferrah said.

  Jonas frowned. He was holding onto a shaping, enough of one that suggested to Tolan he was using it to peer out toward the waste. What sort of shaping would allow him to do that?

  “The border. There’s something about it that doesn’t seem quite the same.”

  Tolan stared. “I don’t see it.”

  There came a fluttering in front of his face and everything suddenly surged closer.

  “A trick I learned in Velminth.”

  Tolan stared through the shaping of wind and realized what Jonas said was true. Something about the border of the waste was different. It was a little irregular, whereas before, it had been nearly a complete line. And as he watched, it seemed to him that it continued to creep inward, pushing toward the heart of Terndahl.

  His breath caught. The intent of the shaping suddenly made sense to him.

  “How long had they said the boundary with the waste had remained the same?” he asked.

  “For centuries,” Ferrah said. “The waste hasn’t shifted one way or the other for countless years. That’s why the people of Terndahl feel comfortable having cities like your home near it.”

  “Whatever that was, it seems it just changed,” he said.

  And from the way the masters were shaping, Tolan suspected they knew, but if they knew, was there anything they could do about it? From what he’d already heard, there was no way to push back the boundary of the waste, regardless of how strong a shaping someone used.

  3

  The air was hot and almost shaped, though Tolan wasn’t certain that was what he detected. His ability to sense shapings wasn’t honed very well yet, though the more he continued to work with the furios, the better acquainted he became with ways of detecting shapings that he had never known before. It wasn’t that he was skilled—far from it—but with the furios, he was able to be so much more.

  “What do you detect, Shaper Ethar?”

  Tolan glanced over at Master Marcella. She had more patience than others when it came to working with him. He was thankful for that, if only because she allowed him the opportunity to practice without any judgment over the fact he needed his furios in order to succeed.

  Then again, Tolan hid his use of the furios, not wanting others to know he was so dependent upon it, almost as if he was afraid of others discovering the fact he didn’t necessarily shape the same way they did.

  “I don’t detect anything.”

  She frowned, the expression souring her attractiveness. Since working with her, Tolan had to try to ignore that, but seeing as how she was only a few years older than him—and much younger than many of the master shapers—it was difficult. She had dark hair, which she made no attempt to bind behind her head as most master shapers did. She wore a jacket and pants, preferring the style of the men over the flowing gowns of the women. When she pressed her lips together as she frowned at him, there was something almost angry to it—and he’d do anything to keep her from getting angry.

  “We’ve been out here the better part of an hour and you don’t detect anything?”

  Tolan swept his gaze around. They were well outside of Amitan, the city that was home to the Academy, making exploring
shapings too easy—at least, according to Marcella. She preferred to step outside of the boundaries of the Academy and test him in a different way. In the days since they’d been back from the edge of the waste, everything had gotten back to normal—or as normal as they could be. He and Ferrah had been researching the waste, but they hadn’t come up with any answer about how the border could have shifted.

  He and Marcella were near a narrow stream, the water moving slowly, all part of her desire for him to use that in his shapings. A wind gusted, blowing across the landscape. With the heat in the air, it seemed almost as if this was her way of trying to ensure he would detect each of the elementals, though he didn’t know how much of this was from the elemental bonds and how much shaped by Marcella in her attempt to instruct him.

  “By now, you should have detected something,” she said.

  Tolan closed his eyes, squeezing them shut as he focused. He strained to reach the element bond, searching for some way of calling on that power. It should be there, but for whatever reason, it simply didn’t come to him the way it came to so many others.

  Using the furios, he called on that power, pulling through it, and felt the familiar stirring within him. It still troubled him that he should have that connection to the elementals, and to fire elementals in particular. And yet, the longer he focused through the furios, the easier it became to do any sort of shaping. Wasn’t that what he was after?

  He had discovered the more power he put through the furios, the likelier it was he would call upon an elemental. In this place, the dangers of summoning an elemental weren’t nearly as significant as they would be in other places. Nothing like when the elemental had been freed within the city or whatever had happened on the edge of the waste, but still, he had no interest in releasing an elemental from the bond again.

  “I feel each of the elements, if that’s what you are getting at.”