The Water Ruptures

by D. K. Holmberg

  When the hands were removed, the smooth, silvery surface was revealed.

  Tolan had seen this before. He wore one on a necklace taken from his home, but if that were the case, could there really be that many runes worked into such a tiny shape?

  He turned and came face to face with his parents.

  “You shouldn’t be here already,” they said.

  “Where am I?”

  “It’s not time for you to be here.”

  “Why? What did you do?”

  His mother took his hand and he felt the warmth of her touch, a soothing caress, and a familiar sense of comfort that came from her. She smiled at him, all the pain and fear fading away, leaving him with a sense of hope—and purpose.

  “You need to go now, Tolan.”

  “I don’t know what’s happened.”

  “You do know what’s happened. Just as I know you shouldn’t have managed to unlock it so soon. As I said, it wasn’t your time.”

  “What did I unlock?”

  “Secrets.”

  “What kind of secrets?”

  “The kind of secrets the Academy has wanted.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “You will, but now is not your time.”

  Tolan glanced from his mother to his father. Was any of this real?

  Somehow, he didn’t think it was. He might be having this vision, but none of it was happening in the real world, which meant it was all happening within his mind. He remembered the Grand Inquisitor grabbing his wrists, holding onto them the same way as it felt as if his mother did, and her shaping flowed into him.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?” Tolan asked.

  “That is what happened. It is up to you to prevent that knowledge from escaping.”

  “Where would it escape to?”

  “The Academy.”

  “Why can’t it escape to the Academy? I serve the Academy. I was Selected.”

  “Of course, you were.”

  “Of course, I was? I’m not a shaper!”

  Was he actually having an argument with his parents within his mind? The idea seemed impossible, and yet—that was what he was doing.

  If this was real—if he was having memories of his parents unlocked by the spirit-shaping he suspected coursed through him, was there anything more he could glean from it?

  “Were you taken by the Draasin Lord, or do you serve him?”

  “Yes,” his parents said at the same time.

  “That’s no answer.”

  “You must find your own answers, Tolan.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “You must continue to try. We’ve done everything we can to protect you. Unfortunately, it might not have been enough.”

  “Protect me from who? From what?”

  “You must continue to learn. Grow stronger. You will be needed soon.”

  “I will be needed for what?”

  “Find your ancestor.”

  The image of his parents began to fade and Tolan reached for it, trying to grab it, but it dissipated.

  He strained, grabbing again, trying to understand what it was they had done. They were responsible for this, though he had no idea how.

  He turned again, expecting everything to spin, but nothing did.

  He was standing in his old home. Could that have been where he’d been all along? If so, then what had they wanted him to see?

  He turned, walking through the kitchen. There was no strange sense of movement as there had been before. The light he’d seen pouring through the window had faded, leaving it dark. Shadows danced around the edge of his vision, pressing in. The air had a heaviness, a thickness. He wanted to get away from it. It was unpleasant, though Tolan didn’t know why it felt like that.

  He turned, heading back toward his parents’ room. The room had been turned over, everything sorted through, the wardrobe tossed and broken. Even the bed had been torn apart. Someone had come here looking for something.

  He made his way toward what had been his room. The room was nothing like what it once had been. There were stacks of stone. Buckets of water. Wind swirled around it all. A flame danced in one corner. In the center was a strange pool of silvery liquid he felt as if he’d seen before.

  Tolan backed up and when he did, he felt as if he ran into something.

  A barrier.

  He felt his way along the barrier, trying to get out.

  He’d felt a barrier like this before, but where?

  He continued to work his way around the barrier, straining as he struggled to get free of it.

  There was nothing he could detect about how to get free from this barrier.

  As he made his way through the house, the barrier surrounded him, preventing him from going anywhere but within the house.

  “Mother! Father!”

  There came no answer. Only an emptiness.

  The longer he searched through the house, the more the darkness he saw all around him seemed to swallow everything. Shadows moved at the edges of his vision, and they seemed to grow thicker the longer he turned and looked. There was something here that he thought he was meant to find, but what?

  He spun again, hoping for the sense of movement, and he was confined again. The barrier trapped him, squeezing in upon him. The more he fought, the more he felt as if he were trapped.

  There was no way to escape.

  Tolan hurried through the house. There was only one place he could move, and that was to the workroom at the back of the house. It was the only part that remained open.

  When he threw the door open, blinding white light welcomed him.

  Tolan stood at the edge of the doorway, and it felt as if there was something significant about it, but he hesitated to cross over that threshold. If he did, what did it mean? Would he be trapped outside the home?

  The barrier continued to press, pushing him further and further away.

  He recognized the energy of the barrier. With sudden understanding, he knew this came from the Grand Inquisitor.

  All along, he had thought the key to getting past her barrier involved sliding underneath it. He had feared attempting to power through it, afraid of what might happen if he were to do so, not wanting to draw that attention.

  Tolan stood in place, fixed, refusing to yield and move away. He focused on a shaping. Would it even work within his mind, trapped as he was?

  Power built within him.

  With all the practice he’d done over the last month, he recognized the shaping. He wrapped earth and fire, combining the two. The power surged, and he pushed it upon the barrier, but it still wasn’t enough. Her magic overpowered him, forcing him back. He was forced into the bright white light. With each step backward, he felt as if something were fading, some part of him were fading. If he allowed himself to slide back, he would be lost.

  Her spirit shaping.

  Tolan knew with sudden certainty that was what it was, but how could he avoid her shaping him? He put everything he could into resisting. Fire and earth weren’t enough, but would he be able to summon water and wind?

  He’d failed so far, but that didn’t mean he would fail now. And now he had a greater need than ever before.

  He reached for that power deep within him. It was the same power he drew upon when calling to earth and fire. It was there. He’d had access to it through the Keystone, an ability to reach for that power, but he’d never done so without the bondar.

  The stirring of power came to him.

  It came slowly, building with intensity, and the longer it came, the more Tolan recognized it. Having worked with water and wind at the Keystone gave him a sense of what it should feel like, and he continued to focus on it, drawing upon that power, calling to it.

  Would it answer him?

  All he needed was a surge of a connection. All he needed was a fluttering of familiarity. If that came, he knew how to use it.

  A stirring came from deep within him. It reminded him of the warmth he’d felt from his mothe
r’s touch. It was like a kiss upon his cheek. The summer breeze. The wind tousling her hair. That power surged within him and Tolan reached for it, summoning the wind, adding it to his shaping.

  It left water, but could he reach for water?

  A memory of the day his parents disappeared came to him, the hot tears running down his cheeks, and with that memory, he added the power of water to his shaping.

  Tolan pushed, combining all four elements together as he forced his way against the barrier. There was a moment where he felt as if he had succeeded. In that moment, he halted the progress of the barrier as it pushed upon him, preventing himself from sliding backward even another step.

  And then he was pushed back once more.

  Tolan pushed back against the barrier, trying to force his way through it, battering it with the element powers, but his inexperience shaping water and wind didn’t grant him the connection to those elements he needed. The shaping wasn’t strong enough.

  He wasn’t strong enough.

  It began to unravel. As it did, the barrier continued to force him back, sliding against him, and he slipped further out into the bright white light.

  There was emptiness there.

  Tolan struggled. He wanted to be anywhere but at emptiness.

  Spirit. He had to protect himself with spirit, but how?

  He didn’t have a connection to spirit, but he believed he’d somehow been protected by it over the years. Somehow, he had managed to avoid getting spirit-shaped, until now.

  The only thing that had changed was the physical touch.

  He needed to fight. He needed to be strong.

  More than that, he needed to find some way of accessing spirit, but he didn’t know it.

  Or did he?

  What had he done with fire? He had protected himself, creating a barrier that had deflected her shaping. He had turned it inward, forcing it so she would not know what he had done.

  Tolan started with fire. As he added it, he twisted it, inverting the shaping so it would focus upon him. He turned to earth, adding that element, doing the same thing as he created another barrier, layering it upon himself. The shaping continued to build, wrapping around him, and he inverted it much like he had with the other. Next came wind. Though he didn’t know how to use it quite the way he did the others, Tolan wrapped that around him, trying to tie it off, twisting it inward. It was more difficult to wrangle, and it seemed to flutter away, almost like if he tried to pull on it too long, it would dissipate, and he realized he didn’t need to force it. All he needed to do was direct where he wanted the shaping, and the connection to the wind would do the rest. Lastly, he added water. Water was healing. Water was restorative. Water was life. Water could also be death. Tolan had felt that when he had nearly drowned while Master Marcella had attempted to forge a connection between him and water, one they both thought he didn’t have otherwise.

  With the last wrapped around him, he felt a deeper stirring. All of the elements were aligned, and strangely, they were contrasting. Fire and earth shouldn’t be stacked in that way, but neither should water and wind. Somehow, the connection allowed him to secure it. He took a step, pushing against the barrier. That step allowed him to take another. And then another. As he did, he forced his way forward, free from the bright light.

  Tolan took another step. The barrier began to bulge.

  For a moment, he began to think he would succeed.

  And maybe he would. It was possible that shaping like this would free him, but then he was forced back once more.

  This was all in his mind. He knew it was, and knew it couldn’t be real, but at the same time, it felt real. It was terrifying, and if he were continually forced backward, he feared he would be dragged into whatever shaping Master Irina intended to use on him.

  He needed to fortify the barrier, but his shaping wasn’t enough.

  Could there be another way to do so?

  The elementals.

  Tolan had enough of a connection to them to at least think he might be able to succeed. If it worked, if he were able to use the elementals, maybe he would be able to prevent Master Irina from overpowering him.

  Which elemental would he focus on first?

  Fire. He knew hyza, and he added hyza to his shaping, augmenting what he had done. It took a moment, but slowly—almost painfully—the connection to that elemental flowed into him.

  From there, he added jinnar. He didn’t need to draw upon the strongest of elementals, only those that would give him an opportunity to fortify his barrier.

  Next came wind. He didn’t have as much experience with shaping wind, having only spent some time with the wind elementals, thinking of ara while at the Keystone, but he was able to draw upon this, calling to it.

  Lastly was water. They were many water elementals, but the one that came to his mind was the one tied to the mist, the spray that had splashed in his face when he had nearly drowned, that of masyn.

  It surged, and with it, additional power flowed through him.

  He took a step.

  The barrier tried to force him back, and Tolan realized that trying to step through the barrier wasn’t going to work. He needed something else. He needed a sharper way to puncture the barrier. He needed to force his way. There was no method of sliding beneath it. And attempting to bulge it gave the Grand Inquisitor an opportunity to resist. He didn’t want her to have such an opportunity.

  Tolan pressed, focusing his shaping to a point. He forced it forward and slammed it into the barrier.

  There was no reason that should work. But then, there was no reason any of this should work. It seemed as if his shaping was effective, allowing him to stay free of whatever it was the Grand Inquisitor was doing to him.

  He continued to push power into his shaping, honing it into a tight point. It drove like a wedge into the shaping she was trying to press upon him.

  The barrier began to fail.

  As it did, he became aware of renewed attempts to fight, every attempt to thrash against what he had done, but Tolan resisted. With his shaping honed to a point, he was able to continue to push against what she was doing.

  With it sharpened to a point like that, Tolan took a step forward.

  The barrier separated.

  It did so slowly, parting on either side of the sharpened shaping.

  Tolan slammed that wedge again and again against the barrier. He needed to get free. This was his opportunity.

  As he hammered, the barrier continued to fail under the onslaught of his shaping.

  And then it shattered.

  Tolan staggered forward. He half expected to come stumbling out of darkness, but instead of darkness, he stumbled into light.

  For a moment, he thought he’d made a mistake and had been redirected, forcing him into the strange bright white light that the Grand Inquisitor had wanted him to go into, but as he stepped forward, warmth flowed over him, reverberating within him, echoing with his connection to the elements—and the elementals.

  It was a sense unlike anything he’d ever felt, and he closed his eyes, breathing it in.

  Power flowed into him.

  The possibility that it was spirit. He wasn’t combining any of the elements and didn’t think he was tapping into any new power.

  Yet, whatever he was doing allowed him to reach some new power.

  The only explanation he had was that it was spirit.

  Tolan drew that power inward and wrapped it around him, adding to the other elements he already had wrapped around his mind. He had no connection to an elemental, but with this one, it seemed as if he didn’t need one. The summoning he’d used for the elementals flowed through him and echoed within his mind.

  He held onto this power, reveling in it, feeling as if he could do anything.

  It was unlike anything he’d ever imagined. It was the kind of power he could see protecting all the people he cared about. It was the kind of power he understood could be used to destroy. And it was the kind of power he knew to
fear.

  He released it.

  It eased away, but a residual remained, circling a part of him. He let go of his other shapings, knowing he had no choice, his strength fading. Even in his mind—or this vision or dream or whatever it was—there were limits to shaping, much like there were limits in the outside world.

  As the power retreated, he clung to it, hoping he could protect himself for just a moment longer. The moment he lost control, he worried Master Irina would find a way to harm him.

  He needed to keep her from spirit shaping him, but his strength failed.

  Tolan strained to hang onto his shaping, clinging to it, but it slipped away.

  Water first. Then wind. Earth followed, though more slowly, and with a strange rumbling sense that rolled through his entire body. Finally, fire. It burned within him, almost as if he could grab at it, but then it began to fade, dissipating, and the longer he attempted to grasp it, the more it left him.

  Shaping power departed him. It left him shaking, empty, tired.

  A strange thought came to him: Why should he be tired within a dream?

  And then that thought began to fade. As everything went black, there was a flash of white light, and he awoke.

  18

  Tolan looked around and saw he was in the same room he’d been in, the Inquisition no longer over as he had believed during his vision. He was trapped, stuck in this place—wherever it was—forced to be a part of whatever the Inquisitors were doing to him. His entire body ached and his head throbbed, leaving him feeling as if he had been out too late drinking in the taverns.

  He pushed off the floor and realized he wasn’t alone.

  Master Irina lay across from him. She didn’t move. He scooted back away from her.

  As he did, he watched to see if she was still breathing. Her breaths came regularly, her chest rising and falling steadily, and he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. It might be easier if she wasn’t.

  But then, if something had happened to her, he would be the one blamed. In that case, it was better to have her still living. He was already in trouble with the Inquisitors. If Master Irina ended up dead, there would be no one left to believe him.

  As he watched her, he rubbed his knuckle against the side of his temple. His head throbbed, and he was hopeful he could relieve some of the pressure but touching the side of his head left it aching. Lights flashed behind his eyes and he took a deep breath, trying to clear his mind.