A shaping built overhead, and an Inquisitor dropped from the sky. Then another. Then another. Within moments, there were a dozen Inquisitors.
They all surrounded Aela.
They ignored him, focusing on the elementals. They sent shapings toward each of the elementals, shapings designed to force the elemental back into the bond, pushing upon them, driving them away from this world.
Maybe he could add another elemental? If he could summon more, then perhaps he could overwhelm their ability.
Which elemental would he focus on?
If summoned a draasin, he thought he might be able to distract them. They would be forced to focus all their attention on the draasin and use more power than they currently were in order to stop them.
The draasin was one elemental he rarely attempted. Doing so was dangerous, but he had to try.
Taking a deep breath, he imagined the draasin. He thought of fire. He summoned flame, drawing it through him, through this place, through the power that had once been here and where a lingering amount of it remained. When the Keystone had been here, he had been able to summon the draasin, and he thought he could again.
It started slowly, flames spreading outward as if to form arms. A body elongated and gradually grew. It was different than what he remembered of the draasin depicted in the books in the Academy. With it, there came power, but it was the kind of power he felt was coming more from him than from the actual elemental.
Tolan continued to feed the draasin, giving more and more of himself to the shaping. As he did, he felt it growing, emerging. At the same time, it didn’t feel nearly as potent as he detected from the other elementals he had summoned. Either this wasn’t the same type of elemental, or what he was drawing forth wasn’t a draasin.
Maybe this was a mistake, attempting the draasin? He’d never done so, and in order to use it effectively, he thought he needed to find an elemental that could be powerful.
Hyza.
For some reason, he’d felt connected to hyza ever since he’d experienced it. There was power that came from his connection to that elemental, and he was aware of fire—but also earth.
Focusing on it, he shifted his shaping, and the draasin wings that had elongated began to curl downward, turning into legs, and through that, he continued to pull upon hyza, letting more and more power come.
This time, there was a sense of independence. He detected the overwhelming change, the drawing of the elemental.
“Help me,” he whispered.
The elemental separated from the bond.
Tolan felt it as it did. It was a popping, as if the elemental had been there and then was not. Through it, he was able to detect the way it manifested.
There came a hissing, a painful sound like steam burning off, and the elemental darted forward, slamming into the nearest of the Inquisitors.
Tolan turned toward the Inquisitors. The effect of the shaping had been enough that he could no longer shape anymore. He had sapped his strength, but perhaps it was unnecessary to do anything more. As he turned to the others, he saw most of the elementals had been suppressed.
The Inquisitors had done that?
Tolan had barely detected it. When he had done something similar before, he had been acutely aware of when the elementals were forced back into the bond, and this time, he was not.
Was it a matter of his distraction? He had been so focused on the draasin—and then hyza—that he hadn’t been thinking about the other elementals. Without those other elementals, he didn’t have the same support. It wouldn’t be long before the Inquisitors managed to overpower hyza, forcing it back into the bond.
Yet, there was something different about hyza than the other elementals.
Hyza felt real. The others hadn’t popped out of the bond quite the way he felt hyza had. With hyza, he felt a strange connection, an awareness of the elemental, and there was a ferocity, a rage that boiled within it. Tolan latched onto that, letting the elemental know he was there with it and for it.
He turned toward the Inquisitors. There might not be anything he could do, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
Aela approached. Shaping swirled around her, keeping hyza at bay. The other Inquisitors worked to suppress the remaining elementals—or whatever they were. Two of the Inquisitors were down, their bodies broken, their proximity to hyza suggesting it had been responsible for what had happened. Tolan had a hard time finding any remorse.
“I think you have quite a few answers we would like.” She turned her gaze upon the field before it settled on hyza. “Here I have long thought the Draasin Lord was wrong, but perhaps there is some power to controlling the elementals. With an untrained shaper nearly able to hold us back, I can’t deny I’m curious to know what someone with actual training might be able to do.” She motioned to the others, who fanned out around her.
Tolan remained fixed in place and hyza stayed near him, practically guarding him.
“Go,” he whispered.
The elemental cocked his head to the side, almost as if it understood what he was saying.
“Don’t stay. I don’t want you to be caught up in this. You don’t need to be here with me.”
Aela grinned at him. “Are you trying to speak to it? I find it amusing you would think you could have a conversation with an elemental.”
He ignored her taunting. There would be no escaping. Nothing he could do to prevent her from reaching it, but he still wanted to fight. There had to be some way of stopping her, but perhaps that time was beyond him.
She continued toward him. The shaping building from her was incredible, and he couldn’t imagine how she was able to hold onto such power despite having used shaping for as long as she had. At this point, Tolan had nothing left, everything within him overwhelmed.
She smiled as she approached. “I think your last Inquisition was not nearly long enough. This time, you will remain with us until we have the answers we seek.”
Tolan could only shake his head.
A shaping was building, but it was not nearby.
Did she have more Inquisitors coming?
It didn’t seem like the shaping he had detected from the disciples, so whoever was using it was not near enough to be of much help. He ignored that he was isolated. There was nothing to do about it anyway. He was trapped, and once the Inquisitors captured him, there would be no escaping.
Another shaping built. This one was nearer.
He detected something familiar within it, though why would that be?
This shaping caught Aela’s attention. She looked up. As she did, Tolan brought his eyes up to the sky and realized there were three shapers approaching.
He blinked, half unable to believe what he was saying. “Grand Master?”
Aela shifted the focus of her shaping, angling it upward. As she did, it blasted against an unseen barrier the Grand Master held. It wasn’t just the Grand Master. The Grand Inquisitor was with him, and she created a shaping, this one of spirit, and it flooded downward, swirling toward him, an alarming kind of power.
Tolan turned his attention to hyza. “You need to go. There’s nothing you can do here other than get forced back into the bond.”
The elemental looked at him, a flicker of understanding crossing its eyes, and he thought he heard a whisper of something in the back of his mind, but then it was gone.
The elemental darted off, loping toward the forest before clearing the wall with a powerful jump. When the elemental was gone, two of the Inquisitors grabbed Tolan.
“Take him. I will catch up with you,” Aela said.
With a blast of shaping, they took to the air. Tolan tried to resist, attempting to fight, but he was exhausted. The Inquisitors held onto him easily, carrying him as if he was a child. Compared to them, his shaping ability was childlike.
In the air, they headed south, away from Amitan.
“Where are you taking me?” His voice was weak, and he wished he had more strength in the questioning, but he
simply did not.
One of them started to answer, but a strange shaping near him built and slammed into one of the Inquisitors. The man went spinning off, spiraling away and dropping to the ground. It left only one of the Inquisitors holding onto Tolan.
He barely had time to register that the attack had come from one of the disciples. The nature of it was similar to their attack, powerful, flowing from them, but the kind of attack reminding him of the way he shaped, a similar sort of energy to what he drew upon when pulling on the elementals.
That no longer seemed to be a coincidence.
Maybe the disciples of the Draasin Lord were more like him than he realized.
His father served the disciples, so perhaps that was why.
The other Inquisitor wrapped Tolan in a shaping of earth, squeezing him. He added wind, forcing Tolan with him, and together they streaked higher and higher into the sky. Tolan could no longer keep track of where they were. For a moment, he thought he felt the effect of their shaping and keep track of where he was being taken, but he lost it.
He needed to fight.
If he could call upon ara, perhaps the wind elemental would give him a little bit of strength, enough that he’d be able to escape his capture. He focused on nothing more than the sense of wind. He ignored everything else. The pain. His fatigue. The fear he felt at what was taking place. Through it all, he focused instead on wind and nothing more.
The elemental whistled past him, and he drew upon it. Ara began to appear.
“Help me,” he whispered. It felt like he was asking the elementals to help an awful lot, and yet, despite that, they still answered.
This time, it twisted, unwinding him from the Inquisitor, and Tolan dropped.
He streaked toward the ground, moving far more rapidly than he could control. He focused on wind, on earth—thinking he’d be able to buffer his landing on water to try to cushion the blow, and even on fire, though he had no idea what using fire would even do. Perhaps nothing at this point.
As he continued to drop, he felt himself slowing.
Only, it wasn’t anything he was doing.
He searched for signs of the elemental, something that would tell him why he was slowing, but he could come up with nothing.
Then he landed.
The suddenness of it took away his breath and he spun around, looking for anything able to help him understand who had guided him to the ground. It wasn’t likely to be the Inquisitors. They would have no reason to have helped him like that. Maybe it was one of the disciples.
Tolan looked up, and as he did, he saw two disciples facing the Inquisitor. Neither of them was his father. Where was his father?
If he were involved, he would have to be nearby.
Tolan searched for evidence of him, looking around the clearing, but there was nothing. He started toward the tree and a figure appeared.
Tolan tried to prepare a shaping, readying to wrap himself in it, but it didn’t come to him nearly as quickly as he needed it to.
He slipped his hand around the bondar. If nothing else, he was going to fight however he could, and if that meant using power of the bondar—however weak it might be at this point—he was going to do that.
As the figure appeared, Tolan’s hand dropped to his side. “Ferrah?”
5
Ferrah started toward him, her hand clutched around something and her eyes darting around, scanning the forest all about them. Her chin was jutted forward, her jaw set, and as soon as she felt confident there wasn’t anyone else in the vicinity, she went running toward him.
“Ferrah, you shouldn’t be here.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“The Inquisitors—”
“I know what happened with the Inquisitors. We saw the effect of it.”
“You know?”
“The Grand Master has secured the Academy. I was barely able to escape.”
“Why would you have wanted to escape?”
“I knew you weren’t in the Academy, which meant this somehow involved you.” She arched a brow at him, grabbing for his arm. “This always seems to involve you.”
“Ferrah, this time, I don’t know that you should be here. There are disciples of the Draasin Lord.”
“I’m aware. I saw them in the city.”
“It’s more than that. It’s my father.”
“What about your father?”
He needed to tell her. When it came to Ferrah, he didn’t like lying to her about anything. She deserved the truth, if only because she had helped him so much and had been such a part of everything he had done. Yet telling her the truth about this was terrifying. It meant admitting he was everything people had always said him to be. For so long, he had fought that. Tolan had avoided those rumors, ignoring them, and yet, despite everything, it turned out the rumors were true.
“He’s… He’s with them.”
It was difficult to say, and incredibly difficult to admit, and yet, telling Ferrah wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be.
She looked at him with sadness marking her deep blue eyes. “Tolan, I am sorry.”
“We can talk about it somewhere else. I don’t know that I want to be here when the disciples show up.” After what he’d seen, the violence within them and his father’s eagerness to attack, how could he? That wasn’t what he wanted for himself.
“Where would you go?”
“Back to the Academy, if I can.”
“Why do you think you can’t?”
At first, he had intended to run, thinking he had no choice. If it were no longer necessary, did he have to run? Now the truth about the Inquisitors was out, it was possible he wouldn’t need to. He could return to the Academy.
And if he did, then he would never know anything about his father.
Considering the fact his parents had left him behind, he wasn’t sure if that even bothered him. He needed to go, to learn what had happened and why they had abandoned him, and yet, if he left now, there were other answers he’d never have.
He looked around, and as he did, he knew he wouldn’t be able to shape his way back. “Do you think you could help?”
“We aren’t that far from the Shapers Path,” she said.
“I don’t know that I can reach the Shapers Path. After what I’ve gone through, it might be more than I can shape.”
She slipped her arm around his waist. “Hold on.”
With that, she shaped, bursting from the ground with a hint of wind. She added a touch of fire to it, just a little bit, and the combined effect carried them soaring into the air. Even as tired as he was, Tolan was well aware of the way she used her shaping, and more than that, he recognized how much power she had in it. Ferrah didn’t need to use bondars—yet it seemed she was doing.
“How did you know where to find me?” he asked.
“I followed the Grand Master,” she said, flushing so her pale cheeks seemed to match her red hair.
“If he learned you did…”
“Then he’d better not learn what I did,” she said, shooting him a hard-eyed stare.
They reached the Shapers Path. From here, he was able to walk, and she released him, allowing him to make his way along the Shapers Path unaided. In the distance, the sense of shaping continued to build, the occasional burst of power exploding nearby enough to cause him to stop and look, to see if he could pick up on what triggered the shaping, and yet he was unable to do so. Every so often, he would detect a sense of shaping coming from the disciples. Each time he did, Tolan paused, looking to see if there was anything within that shaping that he could determine, but there wasn’t anything other than that strange sense triggering an awareness, a memory of the elementals, leaving him believing the disciples must use a shaping similar to his.
“You were able to make it all the way out here after the Grand Master?” He’d seen the type of shaping the Grand Master could use and the way he was able to travel. Ferrah shouldn’t be able to follow so easily.
“I�
�m not without shaping strength, Tolan,” she said. “It’s easy enough to use earth and wind to track you and your shapings.”
“You were willing to risk yourself against disciples of the Draasin Lord?”
“Don’t make it sound like I did something heroic. I didn’t know they would be here.”
“But you were willing to come here for me?”
“Tolan, we’re friends.”
As he looked at her, noticing the way she watched him, he recognized a hesitation within her. “Is that all we are?”
She turned and looked at him. Jonas had teased him about having an interest in Ferrah. For a while, Tolan hadn’t believed he had interest in her like that. She was his friend and attempting to change that friendship into something else was a surefire way of losing that friend.
“Is this the time?”
Tolan looked around. “Would you rather we talk about it back at the Academy?”
“In the dorms? No. I just didn’t think talking about something like this after running from disciples of the Draasin Lord along with the Inquisitors was the right thing to do, either.” She looked around and turned toward him, smiling. “If this is where you want to have the conversation, then let’s do it. What are you thinking?”
“I…” he stammered
She smiled. “Always so shy when it comes to this, and yet you’re probably the most confident person I know. But let me make it easy for you.”
She leaned toward him, kissing him gently on the lips. He kissed back, and…
A shaping struck him, throwing him off the Shapers Path.
Tolan cried out and attempted to reach for a shaping, but he was unable to do so. He fell, the ground looming toward him too quickly to react.
And then wind caught him, holding him.
He looked over to see Ferrah dropping down next to him. Shaping wrapped around her, her face caught in a tight concentration.
“See? I told you now wasn’t a good time.”
“I can’t shape anything right now,” he said.
“Use this,” she said, handing him a bondar. It was a withering, the bondar for wind, and the markings along the surface of it told him she had taken it from the Academy.
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 5