The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  And it meant he would have to decide about what he was going to do.

  Yet, he already knew what he was going to do. The Inquisitor had made his feelings about the Grand Master known. If the Inquisitors took control of the Academy, his friends would suffer.

  Tolan still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about everyone at the Academy, but there were those friends. Despite the Inquisition, there had been those who cared about him.

  He needed to attack in a way that involved using his shaping—his unique shaping. It meant a combination of using the element bond along with elementals.

  Which one could he use?

  Fire. That was the one that always came to mind, and partly because he had known it best through using the furios. In this case, he didn’t have the furios. However, he had not only his connection to the element bonds but could use a twisting of saa, or perhaps even esalash. Either way, if he combined the two elementals, he could work them together. In doing so, he thought he could mix it in such a way to overpower this shaper.

  Esalash first.

  Tolan began his shaping, focusing on what he wanted from the elemental, the shape of it, and smoke began to build. The Inquisitor tried to resist, sending wind swirling around, but Tolan struck, adding a hint of saa, twisting that flame elemental at him. It struck the Inquisitor, and though he met some resistance, Tolan managed to blast him. He shifted his focus, and in doing so, he added earth, slamming that into him.

  The combined shaping left the Inquisitor lying on the Shapers Path.

  Slowly, the shaping dissipated. The Inquisitor lay motionless. He breathed, but slowly. His chest rose and fell steadily. Looking around, Tolan could still feel the effect of other shapings, the ongoing attacks from the disciples of the Draasin Lord as they fought with Inquisitors.

  Tolan was conflicted. Which side was he supposed to work with? Who should he side with?

  He didn’t know. All he knew was he was not about to allow the Inquisitors to harm him.

  Focusing on the nearest shaping, he headed toward it.

  It was probably a mistake to be heading directly toward the shaping. At first, he had no idea who he was detecting, but the sense of it was that of an Inquisitor and not one of the disciples of the Draasin Lord. Would it make a difference?

  He lost sight of his father and the other disciples, and though he knew they were still there, he couldn’t determine where. He followed the sense of the shapings, and as he approached, he recognized there was considerable power wrapped within it. It was not just a single element bond shaping, but one using multiple bonds, and spirit was mixed within it.

  A dangerous shaping.

  He had to act. He had to do something in order to stop it.

  As he ran, he focused on his sense of fire and earth, wrapping the shaping around him, holding it twisted and inverted within him so he could defend himself from spirit-shaping most of all. It might not deflect other shapings, but others were nearly as dangerous as spirit could be.

  It struck.

  Tolan staggered. The strength of the shaping was impressive, and it slammed against his barrier, forcing him back. As much as he tried to ignore it, he didn’t know he could.

  Ducking down, Tolan pulled on his sense of power, shaping as much as he could. He focused on one of the elementals, using a combination of fire and wind, letting that surge from him. As it did, he pushed it forward, letting it hit the sense he had in front of him. He wanted it to strike, and to do so with vigor.

  Tolan had no idea where the shaping would go, but he let it lash out, sweeping away. It struck something but was met with resistance.

  He scrambled to his feet, lurching forward. As he did, he saw a figure cloaked in the black of the Inquisitors, her hair streaming behind her, standing a dozen feet from him, watching him. Amusement shone in her eyes.

  “I knew you sided with the Draasin Lord,” Aela said.

  “And I told you I don’t.”

  “You’ve proven yourself. You can no longer deny you’re in service of the Draasin Lord.”

  Tolan realized what she was doing. She was shaping as she spoke, raising her voice, sending it out away from her.

  Could he contain it?

  A shaping of wind.

  No. Not a shaping, but a request to the wind elemental. It would be difficult and the chances were good that it wouldn’t even work, but he thought he had to try.

  “Ara, please keep her from broadcasting her voice,” he whispered, sending out a wind shaping.

  Wind started to swirl around him, growing with increasing intensity. He didn’t know if it was effective, but it seemed as if it was.

  “And you have proven you are willing to attack the Academy,” he said. “I saw what you did to the Grand Master.”

  “The Grand Master was merely neutralized while we eliminated his mistake.”

  “What mistake was that?”

  “You.”

  Tolan frowned. “The Grand Master hadn’t done anything with me.”

  “No, which is part of the problem. He should have removed you as a threat long ago. If only he acted with more resiliency, perhaps we wouldn’t have this situation.”

  There came the sense of shapings around him, some of them from the disciples, the particular way they were able to bury the elementals within the shapings. Mixed within his sense was that of other shapings, those coming from the Inquisitors.

  “I’m not going to allow you to attack the Academy.”

  “Do you believe you are responsible for defending the Academy now? You really have an arrogance for someone who had no ability to shape before they came here.”

  She sent a shaping at him and Tolan reacted barely in time, twisting off to the side as he did, pushing outward with a blast of earth. He tried to use it to disrupt the Shapers Path, to knock her free, but she smoothed it quickly. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to overwhelm her. Aela was a powerful shaper, not just an Inquisitor.

  “You are untrained. You have some potential, which I admit is surprising given your background, but your inexperience will be your downfall.”

  Tolan pushed out with fire, then wind and earth and finally water, striking with shaping after shaping. He could feel his strength beginning to wane. As it did, he realized what her strategy was. She had wanted him to get weakened and had wanted to force him to use more of his power than he was accustomed to doing. She would wait it out.

  Did it have to be his?

  He had his connection to the elementals. If he could use that, he might be able to force her back.

  Only if they responded.

  In this place, within Amitan, without having a proximity to the Keystone, he wasn’t sure he would have enough strength in order to draw the elementals out.

  Perhaps not here.

  There was a place where he knew the elementals responded.

  He jumped.

  He fell to the earth, crashing with his speed, the wind whistling around him, and he landed on a cushioned shaping already running through the city. He headed to the outskirts of Amitan, focusing on whether Aela followed him, and could feel her shaping trailing after him. All he had to do was stay a step ahead of her.

  A shaping streaked past him.

  Aela was carried on her shaping of wind and fire, and she hovered in the air. It was a powerful shaping, the kind he wondered if he could even re-create, but now wasn’t the time to experiment with shapings like that.

  He ran. Reaching the forest was the first step. If he could do that, he could disappear within the trees and he thought he could reach the park where the Keystone had been.

  Aela traveled past him, sliding on a shaping of air that moved her far more rapidly than he could keep up with. Tolan turned off to the left, darting down a side street. He tried to stay between buildings, hiding himself. If he’d had better control over his shaping, he might have been able to grab it while he was running, but he found it difficult to do. Instead, he had to stay focused on avoiding Aela.
r />   A shaping built behind him and Tolan ducked, darting off into an alleyway.

  From here, he worried he was going to get squeezed and there would be nowhere else to go. He focused on what he could control, making his way rapidly through the alley. There was no one out. He wasn’t surprised by that. Many people within Amitan were sensers and would be aware of shaping used around them. If they detected as much power as was thrown around now, anyone with any sense would stay clear.

  Power built behind him and Tolan spun, focusing briefly on the way the fire rolled through him, detecting the steady sense of it. It flowed from his hand, and as he had done before, he twisted it, sending a spiral of saa through it. The shaping twisted like an elemental and spiraled away.

  Using a shaping like that didn’t take quite as much energy. Tolan didn’t know if it had something to do with the nature of his connection to the elementals or from a familiarity. He certainly had practiced these shapings far more than he’d practiced others.

  Spinning back around, he squeezed along through the alley and was thankful when it emerged on the opposite street. He continued running, twisting and turning as he navigated through the streets. A small grouping of people in the distance caught his attention, and he feared for a moment they might be Inquisitors, but they were not.

  Tolan skirted around them, disappearing into the throng, and when he had, he glanced back.

  There was no sign of the Inquisitor.

  He needed her to know where he was, if only so he could draw her away.

  Focusing on a shaping, he directed it straight overhead. He hesitated for a moment, letting wind and water spin, and then raced onward.

  Her shaping reacted almost instantaneously. She caught up to him and did so just as he saw the forest.

  “If only you were better trained, you might have made this chase a little more interesting.”

  “If only you better understood how I shaped, you might have been able to capture me,” he said.

  With that, Tolan focused on earth, letting it rumble through him. He used an image of jinnar, the dangerous earth elemental he had some experience with, and it surged upward, crashing toward her, and disrupted her long enough for him to race toward the forest.

  He reached the edge of the trees as she blasted through his shaping. For a moment, Tolan worried he had actually called an elemental she had destroyed, but he didn’t have a sense of that. If there had been an elemental called, he thought he would have connected to it and would’ve been aware of it, but there was nothing like that.

  Once in the trees, he focused on earth, using that to try to conceal himself. He didn’t need to stay hidden for long and had needed only to mask himself so she couldn’t track him easily.

  He had been through here often enough that he knew the way. Still, as he went, he left a trail, not bothering to mask where he was going, willing to reveal it to her, let her know he was passing through here. She needed to know where the Keystone had been, if only so he could find some way of stopping her.

  The forest began to fade and, in the distance, he saw the clearing, the park where he knew the Keystone to have been. If he could reach it, then…

  A shaping slammed into him.

  It sent him staggering forward.

  Tolan rolled, everything in his body hurting. Had she broken something? A water shaping could restore him, but he needed to get to a water shaper in order to do so. As that thought hit him, another followed.

  It was a mistake coming here. He should have stayed near the city, near other people, and should have drawn her toward the Academy where other shapers would be and could help.

  Now he was isolated.

  There was no one here who even knew he would be out here. He had run from his father and the help the disciples might be able to offer.

  Aela stalked toward him, and loomed close. “That was more interesting,” she said.

  Shaping built. Spirit shaping.

  Immediately, Tolan reached for fire, wrapping it inward, protecting himself. The power of her shaping slammed into him, splitting off to either side, but she left it pouring into him, an unrelenting sense, and he continued to grow increasingly tired.

  “How long can you hold on? You aren’t quite as strong as I was led to believe, though I suspect you’ve been using bondars the entire time you shaped. Do you think you are the only one who knows how to use a bondar?”

  That explained her strength, and as it continued to flood into him, overwhelming him, he realized he would not be able to withstand her spirit shaping. Looking up at her, he knew he’d already lost.

  4

  As Tolan lay there, staring up at Aela as she continued to build a shaping growing increasingly potent the longer she stood over him, he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of bondar she used. Even as he wondered, he knew. There were spirit bondars, and he had seen how they could be used.

  He didn’t have any of his bondars.

  Or did he?

  He still had the necklace, and he slipped his hand forward, grabbing it, and attempted a shaping through it.

  It was a different sort of shaping than attempting it through the furios or the other bondars. In this case, he needed to focus more intently, but found himself struggling to relax and find that emptiness he knew would grant him an ability to reach through the bondar. If it was spirit, then he needed to use spirit through it.

  A shaping built, growing increasingly potent.

  Tolan pushed it out through the ring, forcing the shaping away from him, through the bondar. As it built, he exploded it toward Aela.

  She was tossed off him and he scrambled to his feet, racing toward the clearing.

  What was he thinking?

  What he should be doing was returning to the city—to the Academy. There had to be master shapers there who could help. The only problem was, he didn’t know how many of the master shapers were still under the influence of the Inquisitors. How many remained who would side with Aela?

  The stone wall loomed in front of him, and Tolan jumped for it.

  He pushed off with a hint of a wind shaping, letting it carry him forward, clearing the top of the wall. He landed, rolling forward. When he was done, he paused, looking around.

  There was always something peaceful about this place. Partly, it came from the fact the Keystone had been here. Power existed here. The other part of it came from the fact this was where he first had really begun to understand the elementals and how to shape them, regardless of what method he used. This was his place.

  It was the only thing he could think of to escape from Aela. If he could use the power of the clearing, even without the Keystone, he thought he might be able to stop her.

  When that was done, he would have to figure out what to do next. He still had to deal with the fact his father and the disciples of the Draasin Lord had come for him, though he still wasn’t certain whether he had any interest in going with them. It might be better to return to the Academy if he was able to stop the Inquisitors.

  A shaping started to build on the other side of the wall.

  Tolan ignored it. He focused instead on his shaping, thinking about the various elementals. He worked through all of them, adding earth by drawing jinnar, fire with saa and esalash, wind with ara and lowei, along with water through washir and udilm. They were the easiest for him to summon at short notice, and he focused on one after another, letting the power of those elementals—elementals that could take a more physical form—begin to appear.

  Power exploded.

  Tolan knew he was imagining it and knew he had experienced these elementals when he’d been here before, drawing them out of the bond. And in doing so, he was able to release power. If he could do that again, he might be able to use the elementals to stop Aela.

  “Help me,” he whispered.

  Speaking to the elementals should be easy. It should be nothing more than talking. As he had experience speaking to them, he knew they could answer if they wanted.

  Aela
landed on the top of the wall surrounding the park. She stared at him, and as she looked past him, she smiled. “You have just proven everything we’ve said about you.”

  “What have I proven?”

  “You have proven your interest in working with the Draasin Lord.”

  “I have done nothing other than shape.”

  “Nothing?” She swept her hand around and attempted to push on a powerful shaping, though he couldn’t detect which element bond she used. Possibly all of them. “You released elementals.”

  “These are shapings. How would I have released an elemental?”

  She frowned. She wouldn’t have a good answer to that. If she claimed he’d done it, it would be saying he knew somehow to release elementals faster than even those who’d been fully trained at the Academy.

  “Help me,” he whispered, pushing it out on a shaping of wind.

  Her shaping slammed into the elementals but did nothing.

  That wasn’t quite true. It enraged them.

  Power burst from the elementals, and they all converged, turning toward Aela.

  The shaping building from her was not quite what he would’ve expected. He thought she might turn and run, or might try to attack them, choosing the elementals to try and overpower, as if to force them back into the elemental bond, but she didn’t do that at all.

  Instead, she sent a shaping out from her. It wasn’t the kind of shaping he expected. It burst forward, streaking upward, and exploded high above the park.

  A calling.

  It was the only thing it could be, but what kind of calling was she using?

  Whatever it was, it was designed to draw more of the Inquisitors here.

  If the others appeared, he wouldn’t be able to withstand them.

  Tolan attempted a shaping of his own, but he was tired. The effort of trying to shape, not only through the bondar, but of trying to withstand her, had been more than he could handle. He was exhausted. If he’d managed to have a bondar, earth or fire, he might not have struggled nearly as much, but he had been drawing from his own stores. There were limits to how much he could do.