She was determined to say his name as often as she could, to anger the Sul’toral and disrupt him as much as possible.
“I warned you,” he said.
“I don’t take warnings very well. At least not from someone like you.”
He smirked. “Perhaps I will make you serve.”
He started toward her, and once again, there came a flickering movement. Power built from him, more than what she had seen before. She focused once again.
Sweep the blade around.
Follow the sacred patterns.
Stop the Sul’toral.
In the confines of the small room, that was going to be difficult to do. The wall behind her continued to push forward.
Dheleus stood in front of her, the barrier separating them, a dark smile splitting his lips as he watched. “Did you really think one such as you could stop one such as me?”
She had to think about what she remembered.
The sacred patterns. The flow.
There was something within all of it that she knew, something Master Liu had already taught her.
The knowledge was there. She just had to use it.
“I recognized what you are doing immediately,” Dheleus said. “It is not the first time I have seen such art, though I am surprised someone your age has mastered it. Typically, it takes decades of study, and even then, the art does not flow.”
He twisted, and she realized something. The way he was moving his hands, some aspect to how he was letting that power out from him—she had seen it before. There was a steadiness to him, yet there was a fluidness as well. It reminded her of what she’d seen from Master Liu. From Benji.
Power came from the way he flowed. It was a way of tapping into something greater.
He grinned at her. “Your brother was right. You could have been useful. With your knowledge, however incomplete, you might have been able to become powerful.” He flicked his gaze over to where Timo continued to lie motionless. “And you might have been able to surpass even him. He has a skilled mind, but he had a rigidity to him.”
Imogen resisted the urge to respond. There wasn’t anything she thought she could say, but it was hard to stay quiet because she agreed with him. Timo was rigid in his movements, and it was the reason he had never become more.
Even in the years he’d been away, Timo had never found the flow he needed to become more skillful. Imogen had struggled with it herself, but she had learned to use such precision that she had been able to compensate for her lack of flow.
“You might be surprised by what I’ve learned,” she said.
She tried to move into Petals on the Wind, but there wasn’t the room to do so. The wall had pushed her forward, and she was now nearly compressed between it and the barrier. She shifted to Stream through the Trees, and even that required too much space.
Imogen thought about using Axe Falling, but it wasn’t going to be enough. She switched to Lightning Strikes in a Storm and drove the blade forward. There wasn’t enough room for her to concentrate the power she needed to, and the blade bounced back.
The Sul’toral stood across from her. “You see?”
“Yes. I see what you did,” she said, nodding.
“Your poor understanding will never be sufficient. It cannot be. You have not learned enough, and you have not lived long enough. As I said, perhaps if you had stayed and studied, you might have been able to learn what was necessary for you to become formidable, but against someone like me…” He spread his hands out, and the barrier started to slide with him. “You never stood a chance.”
The barrier squeezed, and it crackled against her skin, cold and biting, reminding her of the enchantments she had taken from the Toral.
She was fixed. Immobile. Trapped.
“Now you will wait. Now you will watch,” he said, sneering. “When the Porapeth comes, you will see me consume his power, and you will watch me ascend.”
“Ascend?”
He chuckled. “There are ways to gain power, and there are ways that have been hidden from others. Now that I have access to this Porapeth, I will ascend.”
The pressure continued to build, and the ground rumbled near her. There was a steady tremble from the wall, which suggested that Benji was coming. She needed to warn him, but even her shouts felt muted. Whatever the Sul’toral was doing and however he was holding that power prevented her from doing or saying anything. There was nothing she could do to counter him, nothing she could do to prevent him from getting to her and using his power on her.
She was trapped, squeezed. And he was going to torment her by forcing her to watch as Benji was consumed. The Porapeth was magic, and that was what Dheleus wanted.
Not that Benji had magic but that he was magic—that was the point he had been trying to make to her on their journey. He was exactly what the Sul’toral would want in order to grow even more powerful.
And to ascend.
She had no idea what that meant, no idea whether there was anything she could do to stop Dheleus, but she could feel the energy coming from him. Much like she could feel the energy coming from Benji as he attempted to penetrate the wall.
It wouldn’t be long now.
She could not move.
There was only one pattern she could use in such a situation, but it was one she had never mastered. Even when she’d studied, Imogen had never truly understood it. Regardless of how much she had worked, she had not been able to find the answer within herself.
Tree Stands in the Forest.
That was pattern she needed now. Somehow, Imogen was going to have to understand something she had failed to do when working with Master Liu.
She closed her eyes. She could feel the way the wall squeezed her, the way the barrier pressed on her, and she ignored the coldness and the hardness of the stone. She ignored everything and focused.
The Sul’toral was focused on the stone, waiting for Benji, who would be here soon.
The ground continued to tremble, and she attempted to turn her head, but could not move. She tried something else instead, using Tree Stands in the Forest, mixed with Lightning Strikes in a Storm. It was a combination of the sacred patterns she’d never managed to do before.
But the stone pushed, and the barrier pressed, crushing her. She had to strike quickly. She had to draw upon her energy, but she couldn’t even breathe. Her heart hammered, and then it began to slow.
In that moment, an eternity stretched. Everything flashed before her, every pattern Master Liu had attempted to teach her. They all stayed within her mind, mixing with the first one he’d wanted her to see, even if she could not do it. And it was that one, the one where she did not have to move, that seemed to be the key to it.
Tree Stands in the Forest.
Master Liu had taught her about Tree Stands in the Forest all those years ago. He had taught her this strange pattern first, the simplest and the most complex, one she had never understood. He’d called it foundational. But now, she had to understand something that had eluded her for so many years she had lost count. She had to master the pattern that all who went to the temple failed to do.
If she didn’t, she would not survive.
What was a tree but something powerful? What was a tree but something with roots that stretched deep beneath the ground?
Beneath the ground.
Could she? It was a strange thought, but she focused, and she pushed her concentration downward.
She could feel the stone. In that moment, she thought maybe it was her dying mind starting to imagine what she was experiencing, but then it passed, and she pushed underneath.
She could feel the presence of the Sul’toral.
Imogen drove upward with Lightning Strikes in a Storm.
A burst of power exploded. The Sul’toral cried out.
In that moment, the barrier eased.
Imogen took a gasping breath, then lunged, completing the pattern with her blade, driving it into the Sul’toral’s chest. She twisted her hands, Petal
s on the Wind mixing with Axe Falling, and she brought the blade down, cleaving the Sul’toral.
He was not going to escape the way L’aran had.
If he had. She didn’t know.
She sunk to her knees and crumpled onto the floor. Dheleus collapsed next to her, his blood pooling by her hands, darker than it should be. As he fell, the dark energy around everything in the chamber faded. She looked up to see moonlight shining down upon her.
Imogen lay motionless, scarcely able to breathe.
So she meditated.
As she did, her mind began to clear. She was the tree standing in the forest.
She didn’t know how long she was there, but eventually, she got to her feet and looked behind her.
Benji had arrived. He had his hands pressed in front of him, and then he swiped them down. The stone that had rippled up and created a wall smoothed back into the outline of the tower.
“Impressive,” he said, glancing down to the fallen Sul’toral. “It’s about time somebody cut that shit open.”
“He was powerful.”
“Most of his kind are. It’s impressive you managed to surprise him.”
“I used a pattern I did not think I understood.”
He crouched down and swept his hands over the fallen Sul’toral, and there came a crackle of energy. Dheleus began to dissolve, turning into dust, and then he blew away on a breeze.
“Just in case,” Benji said.
Imogen peered at the back of the tower, but Timo was gone. He had escaped, though perhaps she had lost him well before then. Her heart ached at the thought. But maybe there was something she could do.
She had been wondering what she was supposed to do next. She could serve the Leier, as all who completed their bond quest were expected to do, but before she did that, perhaps she could save her brother. That would help her people as well.
“It was Timo,” she told Benji. “He wanted to be a Sul’toral. He brought you here.”
For all she knew, that was the real reason he’d gone after L’aran. Imogen didn’t know how far back his pursuit of power went. Could that have been why he’d taken his chosen bond quest all those years ago?
She had so many questions. When—not if—she found Timo, she would get her answers.
Benji frowned. “I was not here because of him.”
“It was because of the Sul’toral?”
He looked over to her and shook his head. “And not because of him.”
“Why, then?”
“I told you already. Because of you, First of the Blade.”
“You came even though you knew you might be in danger?”
He snorted. “Was I in any danger?”
“From Dheleus.”
“Only if he managed to capture me. The ones like this fucker like to think that they’re more powerful than they really are. What he doesn’t grasp is that, while he controls magic, I am magic.” He smirked. “But sometimes they get lucky.”
“So you were in danger.”
“Perhaps,” he said with a slight shrug.
“But you came anyway.”
“I saw that I needed to.”
She nodded slowly. “You know the patterns. The sacred patterns.”
“I understand how everything is connected, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Imogen frowned to herself. It wasn’t exactly what she was asking, but perhaps that was what she needed after all. “I’m trying to understand the patterns better.”
“You don’t think you do now?”
“Better than I did, but I still have much to learn.”
“Then I will teach you.”
She tensed. There had to be something more to his agreement. “Why would you teach me?”
“Because you had an instructor who once believed you could learn.” He motioned for her to follow, and he headed to a staircase that led down from the tower.
Imogen caught up to him. “How well did you know Master Liu?”
He glanced back at her. “I am Benji the Elder. I know him, though he would not know who I am. I know he believed that you had potential, though you left before you had the opportunity.”
She snorted. All this time, she had thought she’d angered Master Liu. That she had been too stubborn. Too defiant. But that had not been the case at all.
They stepped outside the tower. Though the night was still black, there was not the same darkness around them as there had been before. Thunder rumbled, and an occasional lightning bolt streaked through the sky, illuminating the landscape. It was almost peaceful, as if trying to convey some message to her.
“What now?” she asked.
“As I’ve told you all along, First. It’s time for you to decide.”
It reminded her of what Gaspar had said. She had to know her path.
“You will help, then?”
Benji regarded her for a moment, and she could feel power coming from him as he did. “Maybe for now. Until I can see you clearly again. And then you have to find your own way. But I will work with you a little longer.”
As they started to walk away from the tower, she watched Benji.
He was magic, he had said.
A troubling thought came to her, one she did not have the stomach to ask.
If Benji was magic, would following him mean she was his Toral?
The First of the Blade continues with: Unseen.
Having found the true power of her blade, Imogen must use it to protect her people.
After preventing her brother from taking the power of the Porapeth and becoming the very thing her people have defended against, Imogen now chases him, believing he can still be saved.
When a dangerous creature not seen in centuries emerges and begins to hunt those with magic, Imogen fears her brother responsible. Stopping these creatures involves an understanding of the sacred patterns Imogen hasn’t fully mastered, and requires her to protect those the Leier have long warred with.
They need a true master of the sacred patterns, which means the First of the Blade must become something more.
She must find a way to lead.
Want to read more in this world? Imogen is a secondary character in The Chain Breaker series. Start with The Risen Shard.
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading Unbonded. I hope you enjoyed it. If you would be so kind as to take a moment to leave a review on Amazon or elsewhere, I would be very grateful.
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D.K. Holmberg
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Series by D.K. Holmberg
The Dragonwalkers Series
The Dragonwalker
The Dragon Misfits
Elemental Warrior Series:
Elemental Academy
The Elemental Warrior
The Cloud Warrior Saga
The Endless War
The Dark Ability Series
The Shadow Accords
The Collector Chronicles
The Dark Ability
The Sighted Assassin
The Elder Stones Saga
The Lost Prophecy Series
The Teralin Sword
The Lost Prophecy
The Volatar Saga Series
The Volatar Saga
The Book of Maladies Series
The Book of Maladies
The Lost Garden Series
The Lost Garden
nk you for reading books on Archive.
Unbonded (First of the Blade Book 1) Page 27