The Chaos Rises (Elemental Academy Book 6)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He waited, hoping eventually there would come a time when his connection to that and his shaping ability might be triggered, as if he might be able to find some way to use that stirring deep within them, but it never did occur.

  “We could stop for the night,” Ferrah said.

  “Do you really want to?”

  “I don’t really want to, but I think we’re going to need to rest overnight.”

  “I think it’s going to be easiest for us to travel at night. In the daytime when the sun is hot, we might find it’s more difficult to navigate.”

  She nodded, and as she did, she glanced from side to side, a hint of an unreadable emotion on her face. The more Tolan watched her, the harder it was to know what that emotion was. Fear, most likely. It was an emotion he understood and seeing it on her face left him troubled.

  “You can go back,” he said.

  “Just because I’m afraid doesn’t mean I’m not going to do this.”

  They continued onward although neither of them had any real idea whether they were heading in the right direction, only that they were moving straight across the waste, trying to go as quickly as possible after where he thought his mother might have gone. It was possible this was not the right direction at all, and yet if they continued straight onward from where they had left Terndahl, they would have to encounter something.

  Every so often, they would pause and take a drink, then they would move on. As the night passed, they plunged deeper and deeper into the waste, far deeper than any from the Academy had gone in years. Tolan was increasingly aware of how far they were, how separated they were from the rest of Terndahl, and from the rest of the Academy.

  As dawn began to break, the hint of color drifting in the sky, Tolan started to search for a place to rest. Their legs were growing heavy and tired, and with each step, he found himself drifting.

  There was a certain monotony to walking across the waste like this, the way they trudged forward, moving steadily along the rock. It was relatively flat now they were down in this valley, and from where he stood, large fingers of rock would occasionally spring up from the ground, massive towers that looked like some ancient city that had long ago been destroyed, but otherwise everything was flat around him. His boots crunched and his breath was heavy, the only sounds either of them made.

  “We should find someplace in the shade to stop,” he said.

  Ferrah pulled her water bottle out, taking a short drink before licking her lips and putting it away. “We have to be careful out here.”

  “As careful as we can be.”

  “Even if there’s nothing else out here, the heat might kill us.”

  And the fact they hadn’t seen anything, and that there was no one else out here, made it so they didn’t have to fear anything other than the heat.

  Yet, there was something terrifying about being here, something about coming out into the waste, the energy he experienced, the feeling of this place, that left him trembling. Even though they didn’t have the Inquisitors to fear, and he didn’t have to worry about Aela, or even his mother—yet—he was still nervous.

  They made for one of the tall fingers of rock. Much like Ferrah, he figured they could find a place to rest in the shade, at least get a few hours of sleep and wait until the sun began to descend, making it so it wouldn’t be nearly as miserable to continue on their journey. As they neared it, he began to slow, and they reached the tower with him stumbling toward it.

  Ferrah grabbed him and he smiled briefly at her, feeling a little bit embarrassed that she was going to have to prop him up. He was the reason they were here, so he should be the one who held her up, but here she was supporting him. Again.

  They said nothing as they reached the stone.

  Tolan rested a hand on it and steadied his breathing, focusing on trying to get a handle on himself. He took a deep breath and grabbed for his water, sipping it briefly.

  Ferrah helped him sit, and she settled onto the ground next to him. “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I kept thinking about how long it would take if I turned back.”

  “You did?”

  “I know you probably were not at all concerned about any of this, and that with your strange connection to shaping, you felt like this wasn’t all that difficult, but…”

  “This has been hard for me, too. It is more than just the separation from the element bonds.”

  And though it was more than that, Tolan was not sure why that was. It had more to do with the nature of the rock and the heat and the energy around him. He wasn’t entirely sure why that should feel so off, but the more he was here, the more certain he was that it was tied to that.

  He leaned back against the rock, resting his head. His eyes drifted closed, and as they did, he drifted for little while, too.

  At one point, Ferrah settled on his shoulder, resting alongside him, and every so often he would open his eyes and look up at the sky to see the way the sun had shifted, giving him a sense of the passing time. There wasn’t anything else he was aware of. He would take a drink every now and then, and then he would drift. It wasn’t a sound slumber, and in those driftings, he had strange flashes of dreams. They were dreams of elementals, and while it wasn’t entirely surprising for him to have dreams of elementals, it did surprise him that he would have them here.

  Eventually, he awoke fully, and try as he might, he was unable to drift off any further.

  He slipped out from underneath Ferrah and wandered around the base of the stone. There was a sense of power here, though it was simply related to the heat of this place.

  Tolan traced his hand along the stone, feeling the smooth surface, the heat radiating off it. This place seemed to absorb the heat, as if it was trying to capture it.

  He took a few steps back, getting himself out into the bright sunlight. Shielding his eyes, he stared up along the surface of the rock they were near. There was nothing he was able to ascertain, only that it was massive, stretching high overhead, and it loomed over them, casting deep shadows.

  As he stared at it, he frowned.

  He could feel something about it. There was the pressure of this place. That pressure seemed to stem from the absence of shaping, the absence of any element power, and yet that pressure seemed to be something more as well.

  He held onto it. As he did, he tried to see if there was anything he might be able to determine from shaping. If that were the case, maybe he wouldn’t be so helpless out here. He reached deeper within himself, searching for that stirring energy, the way he had felt the elements come to him before, but as he did, there was nothing.

  The longer Tolan searched, the more he realized there was nothing.

  What was it he detected, then?

  He headed back toward Ferrah and found her nestled up against the stone, curled in, the shadows leaning over her, keeping her comfortable. At least she was resting soundly. The two of them needed it, and as they needed to move on through the next night, they would need to be well rested. He would need to consider getting more sleep himself, but right now he wanted to try to understand what he was feeling.

  Maybe it was just the overwhelming sense of the waste and nothing more.

  Tolan took a deep breath and let it out.

  He closed his eyes, focusing on the various senses around him. He used the same techniques he had done within Amitan, thinking that if maybe he could find the signature of the waste, maybe he would be able to understand the nature of the power out here. He started with his breathing. Out here, with the absence of wind, it was one of the few sounds and he held onto that awareness, listening as he took breath after breath, the way it entered and exited his lungs, filling and emptying him.

  He moved on to the feeling of the stone beneath his boots. He had been here long enough that he was familiar with that sense, the way the stone seemed to push back against him, and the steady trembling of the earth with each step they took.

&nb
sp; From there, he welcomed the heat shining down on him, reflected up from the stone. He could feel it on his skin, feel it in the air. It surrounded him. Perhaps he should have started with the heat first, as it was the element he was most familiar with, but he recognized it now.

  And then he moved on to water, thinking of ways the blood flowed through his veins, recognizing the warmth of it, the connection to life, and he held onto that sense.

  All of those senses intermingled, all tied together, and the longer they did, the more Tolan knew he would be able to use them. He held onto that awareness and then reached for the sense of stirring deep within him.

  It would have to be there. He had experienced it long enough and often enough that he knew it would have to be there, but what was it?

  As he focused on it, he could tell that sense was here.

  And then it slipped away from him.

  It was gone.

  Tolan gradually opened his eyes, and when he did, he discovered Ferrah had stirred, coming awake, and sat watching him.

  He smiled at her.

  When he did, there came a deep rumble.

  Tolan jumped.

  It was the first sound other than themselves that they had heard since coming to the waste.

  When the rumble came again, he jerked his head around, searching for its source. Without any connection to the elements, and without any connection to earth sensing, he wasn’t going to able to find where it came from.

  He hurried back toward Ferrah, and when he reached her, the rumbling came again.

  “Tolan?”

  He raised his hand to quiet her.

  Listening, he focused on that sense of the rumbling, the power around him, and he waited. There had to be something out there, some way to better understand it, but there was nothing.

  Gradually, he began to relax and had to hope there wouldn’t be any additional rumbling, but even that wasn’t enough to put his mind at ease.

  “What was that?” Ferrah whispered.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything since we arrived.”

  There came another burst of rumbling, this time closer.

  With a sudden surge of fear, he looked all around. They were no longer alone in the waste.

  10

  Tolan grabbed Ferrah and they started around the rock, staying with the shadows. The moment they stepped out into the sunlight and more heat began to beat upon them, they were going to be in a different sort of danger. He wanted to take advantage of all the time he could stay within the shadows.

  As they circled the base of the massive stone finger of rock, there wasn’t another sound of rumbling. There was nothing. That absence of sound didn’t make him any more comfortable, but did at least give him the sense they had more time.

  What had that rumbling come from?

  The sound didn’t strike him as anything like an elemental. He had been around the elementals often enough that he would know the nature of their rumbling. Earth elementals certainly rumbled, especially as they emerged from the ground, but this wasn’t that sort of sound. This was something else, a different type of energy, and the more he focused on it, the more certain he was it didn’t come from the earth.

  As they made their way around the outside of the stone, there came another sound—a scraping sort of sound.

  Ferrah jumped and Tolan held onto her hand, pulling her with him. “We should have had a weapon of some sort,” she said.

  He pulled back his cloak, pointing to the sword strapped to his waist.

  “That’s great and all, but you have to know how to use it,” she said.

  “At least it has a sharp end,” he said.

  “Sharp for you, too.”

  They reached the far side of the stone finger, but there was still no sign of anything.

  “I think we’re going to have to keep moving,” he said.

  Ferrah glanced up at the sky, taking in the sunlight, and her mouth twisted in a tight line. She nodded, and they started off. They hurried, moving at a quick jog. It was dangerous moving like this, heading across the waste, with the sunlight beating down on them.

  Every so often, they would pause and take a drink but move on again quickly. When they were jogging, there came no other sound. The scraping and the rumbling didn’t return. It was almost as if leaving the finger of rock was enough to pacify whatever had been there. It was ignoring them now.

  When they had been traveling for the better part of an hour, Ferrah paused to take a drink. “This is going to be a strange question—especially here—but could that have been an elemental?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. The longer he was in the waste, the more certain he was the elementals wouldn’t be able to survive out here. The absence of any element energy would make that incredibly difficult. “But then, we didn’t think there was anything out in the waste at all.”

  “Obviously, we were wrong.”

  In all the times the people from Terndahl and the Academy had explored the waste, there had reportedly been no sign of any other creatures. If there was something out here, how had it been missed all that time?

  He’d been focusing on his own sense of the waste, trying to determine if there was any way to connect to it, to use anything he was able to find out about the waste. Tolan motioned for them to stop again. He closed his eyes, focusing on the various elements within himself, starting this time with fire.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The same thing I was doing when I first noticed the rumbling,” he said.

  “You want to try to draw it out?”

  “It’s not about drawing it out. I want to know whether there’s anything we need to be concerned about.”

  “We need to be concerned about our safety out here, Tolan. If we come across anything, we don’t have any way of defending ourselves. Neither of us can shape, and if there is something out here…”

  Tolan ignored her, focusing on the heat radiating upon him. It was warmer now, the sun bright overhead, leaving his skin hot and sweaty. The stone reflected the heat and he drew in that sense as well, the energy from the ground and from the sun all around him. He moved on to the stone beneath his boots, and from there to his breathing and finally to the blood within him. He added to it a different sense, that from Ferrah, the way he could feel her breathing, he could notice the pulsing of her blood.

  There was a connection between the two of them, and yet in this place, the connection was different and faded. Tolan reached out, grabbing for her hand with his eyes closed. Ferrah took it, and by squeezing his hand, they connected.

  He let out a steady breath and focused.

  There came the sense of everything around them.

  Tolan breathed it in, letting that sense of this place, of himself, try to fill him. He waited, hoping there would be some stirring deep within himself, but that stirring never came.

  It was possible it couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to come.

  And then the rumbling resumed.

  It was distant, and this time it was distinctly behind him.

  His eyes snapped open and he looked out into the distance, searching for the source of the rumbling, but it didn’t come again.

  “Did you hear it?”

  “You didn’t?” Ferrah asked.

  “I did, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one who did,” he said.

  “What did you do?”

  “The same thing I did every time while sitting on the Shapers Path in Amitan. Focused on the various elements, trying to pick up on the signature of this place.”

  “And what did you find?”

  Tolan looked around. “I’m not entirely sure. There’s something distinct about this, but I don’t really know what it is or whether there’s anything I can do with it.”

  There was something here, but what?

  He waited, expecting the rumbling would come again, but it didn’t.

  He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. He’d reached for the
connection to this place—and to whatever elementals might be here. It was possible whatever was out there was drawn to his attempt to connect to this place. If that was the case—and knowing something had been twisted here—it was possible this was some sort of twisted elemental.

  He had to try it again.

  Tolan closed his eyes, focusing on the various elements and as he did, they came together more quickly. As before, there was no sense of stirring, nothing deep within him as he had hoped there would be. He reached for the energy, for that sense within him, and waited.

  The rumbling didn’t return.

  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was coincidental that it had come when he had focused the last two times. Maybe there was nothing here.

  He snapped open his eyes, looking over at Ferrah. He shook his head. “It’s not working.”

  She pointed past him.

  Tolan turned.

  When he did, he saw a shape in the distance. It was moving like a blur, but there was something else with it. He wasn’t able to tell what was, only that there was a sense of movement and a sense of power out there.

  What was it?

  “We should get going,” Ferrah whispered.

  “If it’s an elemental—”

  She shook her head. “If it’s an elemental, we don’t want to be out here with it. You said it yourself. The elementals of this place would be different. They’re tied to whatever happened with the Convergence.”

  “Unless they aren’t,” he said.

  “What do you mean that they aren’t?”

  “I don’t really know, only that it’s possible the elementals here aren’t necessarily tied to that Convergence. It might be they’re trying to get free from it.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I don’t, but there’s one way we can try,” he said and reached into his bag and pulled out his series of bondars. He held onto them and focused, but even in doing so, knew there might not be any way to use them. They had brought them on the possible chance they might need them, but neither of them had thought that utilizing bondars in this place would be effective. Trying to use those instruments in a place where there was no sense of shaping energy was unlikely to work.