The Elements Bond (Elemental Academy Book 7)

by D. K. Holmberg

  The elemental tipped his head in his strange fashion, looking at it. “Yes. You with—”

  Tolan shook his head. “I’m not. She used orbs like these to attack my people.” He focused on the image of the attack, thinking of how the orbs had been used, the power that had been pushed upon them, and he thought about how he had done everything he could to counter it. He pushed a sense through him, straining for understanding. He had no idea whether or not the elemental would even be able to detect what Tolan was trying to send across the distance, but he had to find a way.

  “You can see it, can’t you?”

  The elemental continued to swirl, a hint of power spiraling past him. “Mean nothing.”

  “It means everything,” Tolan said. “I’m showing you what happened. I’m showing you how they used these same orbs to attack me and my people. We turned them against their people. That’s why we have the orbs. We can shape into them, store that power.”

  “You knew to use it against me.”

  “Why?” Tolan asked.

  “Because of an elemental,” Ferrah whispered.

  When he glanced over at her, she looked down at the orb.

  “If they place these elementals inside these orbs, they would have power. They wouldn’t have to worry about reaching it. The bondar, Tolan. It’s different than even the bondars we have at the Academy. By trapping an elemental within it, it stores that power. It would be almost an endless supply.”

  The idea that someone would trap an elemental, and would use it, left him feeling sick. Then again, this was the kind of thing his mother would do.

  He looked up. “Have they been using these on you and your people?”

  “Only one.”

  He was the last. “And the others?”

  The elemental swirled around the bondar, never getting all that close to it.

  Tolan thought he understood.

  The others had been tormented in the same way, forced into the bondar, and because of that, nothing more than could be done for them.

  “Was there a draasin?”

  The elemental started to become more agitated. “Lost.”

  “You lost the draasin?”

  “Lost. Like that.” The elemental motioned toward the orb.

  That must have been what his mother was after.

  They did have another draasin.

  He looked over at Ferrah. “At least I think I know what we need to be doing.”

  “You want to rescue them?”

  “I think we need to. My mother came to Terndahl, learned how to make these bondars, and then brought that knowledge here. We have to do whatever we can to rescue these elementals.”

  “What if there isn’t a way to rescue them?”

  Tolan shook his head. There might not be a way. This might be beyond what he could do, but he had to find something.

  “I’m going to need you to work with us,” he said to the elemental.

  He could sense the stirring of distrust, how the elemental fluttered away from him, trying to get free. The elemental had no reason to believe Tolan, and yet he thought the elemental had to.

  “If you can take me to where you were captured. Take me beyond here. I can help.”

  “No help.”

  “There might be. I came with the draasin.”

  “Draasin?”

  Had the elemental not been here?

  He thought about what had occurred, about the nature of the attack, and realized that the elemental hadn’t been here when the Draasin Lord had been. There had been no sense of elementals from the draasin when he had been here the last time. Because of that, Tolan realized he had to try a different approach.

  He had to see if he could uncover anything that might help him know whether there was a way to share his intent with the elemental. What he really needed was to get to a place where he could build his strength back up.

  Once he did that, then he could return to Terndahl. He could return to get others who could help. They could learn what they needed to from here.

  Tolan looked at the elemental, and he focused on spirit.

  He did so by opening himself up to the elemental. He pushed outward, letting everything slow.

  He didn’t try to shape spirit upon the elemental. Instead, Tolan tried to shape it on himself. Using that, he could find answers.

  They were there within his mind.

  Tolan pushed outward and wrapped the elemental within that.

  He focused on the Draasin Lord. He focused on everything he had done since coming to the Academy for the elementals. And surprisingly, the sense of hyza surged up within him, revealing other answers.

  There was power within hyza.

  Because of that, Tolan surged with his connection to fire.

  “There are other elementals, but they’re nothing like you.” He looked at the wind elemental, studying him. “They want to be left alone, but the person who attacked you attacked them as well. She will continue to attack.” Tolan believed that, even though as far as he knew, there was no reason for his mother to keep coming after the elementals in the Academy. No reason other than a desire to control them.

  “Draasin?” The elemental trembled. “How?”

  “I suspect the elemental would ask you the same thing.”

  It was strange to think of the elemental here in front of him not knowing the other elementals, but this wind elemental was so different than any of the other elementals that Tolan had ever experienced that perhaps that was the reason. There was so much that it didn’t know, and so much that it possibly couldn’t find out.

  Tolan tried to smile, but there was no sense of joy within the elemental.

  “Come,” the elemental said.

  Wind stirred around them, lifting Tolan and Ferrah. The elemental disappeared within it, carrying them.

  Tolan lost his sense of where they were going, only that they were heading north. The ground shimmered below them, almost impossible to track. There was no sense of anything other than the elemental, and even that sense was difficult to grasp.

  He tried to focus, trying to regain a sense of place so he could track where they were going, holding onto the sense of hyza, though the elemental was quiet within his mind.

  Finally, they passed something. A border of some sort, and power exploded within Tolan. He gasped and noticed Ferrah was doing the same thing. They had reached some sort of threshold, and now the waste trailed behind them. A grassy hillside rolled in front of them.

  Wind lowered them to the ground. Tolan struggled to adjust to the suddenness of power within him. He breathed it in, focusing on the elements, but something was off.

  He could feel the elements, could feel the sense of power here, and he was aware of the elemental in a way he had been before. Hyza remained in the distant part of his mind, but there were no other elementals. There was no sense of the element bonds.

  “There’s something wrong,” Ferrah said.

  “You can’t detect the bond.”

  She shook her head. “Can you?”

  “I can shape.”

  “And I can sense. I can detect each of the elements, but when I try to reach for them, it’s almost as if… almost as if there is something that prevents me from doing so.”

  The elemental stood in front of them, now in a much more solid form. He looked like a middle-aged man with dark hair and weathered eyes were a flat gray. His face was pale. He wore a long flowing cloak, though all of it was likely shaped into existence. All of it was likely nothing more than the elemental calling upon power. It was strange to see something like that. He marveled at the power and control the elemental had.

  He focused on hyza. It had been a long time since the elemental had been a part of the back of his mind, existing there, but he was there now.

  He held onto that sense, focusing on that elemental, feeling for the fire and earth bonds, but they were gone.

  That was what this was. There was strangeness here, but the strangeness was in the difficult
y in reaching the element bonds.

  “How long have you been here?” Tolan asked.

  “Years.”

  “Are there others here?”

  “Were.”

  The wind swirled around again, and an image began to take form. Within that image, Tolan saw the strange structure of a massive city. Spires towered into the sky. Buildings surrounded it. There was a sense of movement. He suspected they were people, though the detail wasn’t enough to make out all of that.

  “Where is this?”

  “Far.”

  “How many others are like it?”

  “Many.”

  “Where were you attacked?”

  “Here.” A map formed in front of him. On that map, he saw the vast expanse of the waste, a series of dots that suddenly appeared and then disappeared, as the elemental formed whatever sense of the devastation that it had experienced. It shimmered in front of him, a flickering of movement. As it faded, he detected that sense continuing to flare.

  That was the damage that had occurred.

  That was what had suffered.

  How, though?

  His mother was involved, but he didn’t really understand what she had been doing, other than attacking the elementals. There would be someone else with her. That was what Tolan had to find and understand.

  “How long have you been under this attack?” he asked.

  “Long?”

  Tolan nodded. He thought he was beginning to understand. The elementals viewed things differently. They viewed time differently. The elemental had made it seem like they hadn’t suffered for very long, but it was possible that this elemental’s understanding of time was such that it wouldn’t—and couldn’t—really know just how long it had been.

  “Not long,” the elemental said.

  “I need time in my years,” Tolan said.

  “Years?”

  Tolan took a deep breath and pushed a sense across to the elemental, using what he could of spirit. That was what he needed to connect with, and what he needed the elemental to understand.

  “My time.”

  There came a fluttering within his mind. The elemental stirred, shifting with a certain bit of energy, and then there came something more.

  “Two,” the elemental said.

  “Two years?” Tolan turned to Ferrah, shaking his head. “This is wrong. All of this is wrong.”

  Ferrah watched him. Tolan tried to summon as much power as he could, wanting to use that in order to reach for the elemental, but even as he focused on that sense, there was nothing he could call upon. He was tired.

  There was no doubt there’d been an attack here. That much was real. There was no doubt there were others who were taking the elementals, forcing them into the bondars.

  That much was also real.

  Who was his mother working with?

  “Can you help us find the others?” he asked the elemental. “The ones who held you?”

  “Not far,” the elemental said.

  Wind swirled, lifting Tolan and Ferrah. It carried them, streaking along the ground. Now he was reconnected to the elements, feeling that sense of movement was less jarring. He was able to at least track that sense, feeling the energy within the land, a sense of energy that flowed through everything.

  He tried to keep track of where they were going and where the elemental was taking them, but he couldn’t follow it, not nearly as closely as he needed.

  The sense of the elemental continued to fill him. He flowed with Tolan, traveling across the distance, and in doing so, Tolan could feel his energy too.

  In the distance, something shifted.

  He detected it through his sense of the elements before he saw anything.

  The power erupted in front of him.

  There was a considerable sense of power. Everything seemed to flash in his mind like a blast of energy. It reminded him of the attack he had detected before, the nature of what had struck him.

  He shifted, drawing wind in front of him, augmenting everything he could see.

  The elemental slowed, bringing them down to the ground.

  Ferrah looked over at Tolan, looking for the elemental, and said nothing.

  “There’s something up there,” Tolan said. “I can feel it, but I can’t really see it. It’s almost as if it’s shielded from us.”

  “Is it your mother?”

  “If it is, I don’t have any idea how she managed to get here.”

  Tolan focused on an image of his mother, using that and sending it through a shaping of spirit toward the elemental.

  “Is she there?”

  “Many here.”

  Tolan focused on the sense of spirit, frowning to himself. What could the elemental be meaning? What was he getting at?

  There had to be something, but as he focused, he wasn’t able to detect anything. There was only the strange sense of that distant power. It surged in his mind again and again, a flowing and flickering sort of energy.

  He struggled to grasp it, struggling for understanding, but he had to find it. It was there. He was certain of it. As he made his way along the ground, the energy flashing within him, he thought he understood.

  It was power building, but it was power from those who were borrowing shapings.

  In order to use a bondar, one had to be able to shape. That had always been his understanding. There was a need to power it. Without that ability, there was nothing you could do to trigger the bondar.

  There were some who were shapers, those like him who had the ability to reach for the power of the elements, and there were those like Ferrah, people who depended upon the element bonds in order to grasp the kind of power they were accustomed to.

  Then there were the elementals, but they weren’t the same kind of elementals he was accustomed to. They were not the elementals of Terndahl. These were different. These were elementals were part spirit and part elements.

  All of that seemed impossible, but that was what he was detecting.

  Players of power that came from these strange mixtures of elementals.

  Tolan looked over at Ferrah. “We’re going to need help.”

  “For what?”

  “To better understand what’s taking place here. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I can feel something. It’s the flickering of power and the sense of these bondars being used.”

  “Which means—”

  “Which means that my mother and whoever she’s working with have trapped the elementals within them, and she’s learning how to use them.”

  16

  Tolan stood at the edge of the waste. From here, everything felt off. Not the waste; that was familiar to him. He had been to the waste so many times over the years, and had spent so much time recently within it, that standing here now and feeling that energy wasn’t beyond him. It was familiar.

  It was what was behind him he struggled with. There was a strange sensation behind him, an awareness of power, but it was a strange awareness. As much as he wanted to grasp the purpose of that power, he simply could not. He struggled with it. It was different than he was accustomed to.

  Ferrah struggled just as much. Every so often, when he would glance over at her, he could see her gritting her teeth, and he imagined she was straining to create a shaping. Any attempt she made would not be successful.

  Tolan didn’t need to have her keep trying to know that. He could feel she would fail. It was nothing about her inability to shape. Nothing about her strength. It had everything to do with her ability to connect to the bond.

  “I don’t know that it’s going to work for you,” he said.

  “I have to keep trying,” she said.

  “We’re going to go back to the Academy where you can refill the orb, so I don’t know that you have to.”

  “And then what?” She looked over at him. “What does it mean that I can shape in Terndahl, but I can’t shape here? Why should that even be possible?”

  Tolan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
<
br />   “What does it mean that you can shape here?”

  “It means the same thing as what it means that I can shape in the waste.”

  “Why, though?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve always been a skilled shaper. When I was first learning how to shape, it was easy for me.”

  Tolan nodded his understanding. When they had come to the Academy, Ferrah had already been advanced with her shaping ability. Not everybody had the same skill she possessed, and she had used that, proving repeatedly just how potent she could be.

  “It’s almost as if…”

  “It’s almost as if what?”

  Ferrah looked up at him, tipping her chin. “It’s almost as if I’m a fraud.”

  He frowned, shaking his head. “You aren’t a fraud.”

  “I would be if I can’t shape.”

  “That doesn’t mean you would be a fraud. All that means is that you—”

  “Can’t shape.” She turned her attention back toward the land behind them. “How is it any different than what your mother is doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this. In our land, the elementals are trapped within the element bonds. I think that’s why we’re able to shape.”

  “That is why we’re able to shape through the bonds.”

  “But not you. You don’t need that.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “It’s about the bondars. In this land, they don’t have access to the element bonds, and so they have something else.”

  “The bondars,” Tolan said.

  He thought back to the prison he’d found. The domed roofs that had formed the confinement for the elementals. “You think that’s the way those who could shape can bring that energy here.”

  “I don’t really know. All I know is that it has to be connected somehow.”

  Bonds and bondars. The idea that there were so many things were so similar left him troubled. And there was nothing he could do about it except react as he had. All he could do was continue to comprehend the nature of the power.

  “If my mother brought bondars here, she did it because she believed there was something more she might be able to gain,” Tolan said.

  “If they’d seen these bondars before…”