The Chaos Rises (Elemental Academy Book 6)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “What can we do for the corrupted elemental?”

  “There is little that can be done other than what I am doing.”

  “What about the Convergence?”

  “Getting an elemental to the Convergence is quite a bit different than getting a human,” the Draasin Lord said.

  “What about the Convergence here?”

  “It has been protected,” the Draasin Lord said. “That is why I am here.”

  Tolan glanced behind them, but there was nothing but the vast expanse of the waste. He had no idea where exactly that Convergence was, though as he pushed out with a sense of earth, he thought he might be able to pick up on it. It was out there, a sense of it practically waiting for him.

  If it was tainted, then maybe he could restore it. Wasn’t that why he’d come? He’d chased his mother, but he’d also tried to understand more about the Convergence. If he could, then he might be able to end what had happened. And if he could restore the Convergence, perhaps they could work on the next step—restoring the waste.

  “I can feel it,” he said.

  “If you can feel it, then you know to stay away from it.”

  “Why must I stay away from it?”

  “You have grown strong, Tolan Ethar, but you are not meant to intervene here.”

  Tolan turned away from the Draasin Lord, focusing on the distant sense of the Convergence. Because of the other elemental out there, the corrupted one, Tolan knew there had to be some other reason for the Draasin Lord to have revealed himself here.

  “You’re guarding it.”

  The Draasin Lord bowed his head. “I have been here for many years.”

  “What about my mother? How did she reach it?” When the Draasin Lord didn’t answer, Tolan thought he understood. “You weren’t here then, were you?”

  The Draasin Lord breathed out, and there was a hint of frustration in the way he did.

  “You don’t always stay here,” Tolan said. “Because when I first encountered you, it was in the mountains.”

  “There are times I must be gone. When I am, the others that are here suffice.”

  “Others?”

  The Draasin Lord turned and breathed his flame out into the waste. “The Guardians. The others.”

  Tolan focused on spirit, pushing it outward. There were other elementals out there. One for each element, and powerful.

  “Are they twisted?” he asked.

  “They cannot be,” the Draasin Lord said.

  There was a silence between them. Finally, Tolan turned toward the sense of the Convergence. “I need to see it.”

  “I can’t allow that, Tolan Ethar.”

  “Why?”

  “You do not understand its purpose.”

  “If it’s tainted, I’m not going to fall to it. There isn’t anything it will do to compel me.”

  “You might be surprised at what this place is capable of doing, Tolan Ethar.”

  “I have withstood temptation before.”

  “This is a very different sort of temptation.”

  “I need to go there, Draasin Lord. That’s why I was sent here. I can cleanse the Convergence.”

  “I know why you think you were sent here, Tolan Ethar. And I know you have survived crossing this place, and in doing so, you’ve proven something to me that I suspected but was not sure of. That you truly do serve the elementals.”

  “You knew I served the elementals.”

  “I knew you claimed to serve the elementals, and with everything I had seen from you, I believed you had believed it, but in this case, that you were able to reach this, that you were able to reach me, tells me you are more than I had even hoped.”

  “If you believe that, then you need to let me reach for this Convergence.”

  Tolan felt strongly that he needed to do that. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that there was something he would need to find. If he could, he believed he could discover some way to heal it.

  As Tolan looked at the Draasin Lord, he couldn’t help but know that if the Draasin Lord wanted to, he would be able to prevent Tolan from doing anything. The Draasin Lord was far too powerful, and if he had been responsible for protecting this place of Convergence, keeping anyone or anything else from reaching it, then there was nothing Tolan would able to do.

  Yet he had to believe there would be some way.

  Heat began to surge along the Draasin Lord’s body, and there was an ongoing sense of energy, but there was something else to it as well. There was a sense of understanding.

  Even if Tolan were to go to the Convergence, what did he hope to find?

  The Draasin Lord looked at him, heat radiating off his body, the sense of energy that was there leaving Tolan thinking he had made a mistake.

  All of this was because he had followed his mother, coming across the waste, searching for answers on behalf of the Circle, and now he felt as if there were additional answers he didn’t have and more information they needed. After having seen the elemental twisted and tainted by this darkness, perhaps this was not meant for him. He had a different role.

  “You begin to understand,” the draasin said.

  “I’m not ready for the Convergence.”

  “What you seek is there, but even if you were to approach it, there is nothing you can do to change it. This is my responsibility.”

  Out on the waste, with the power and energy that was here, the sense of emptiness, he couldn’t help but feel as if he needed to have a different responsibility, a role greater than he’d already taken on, and he had to believe whatever else he did would be for the right reason.

  “Is my mother here?”

  The Draasin Lord breathed out, a hint of steam and fire within his breath. It was interesting to experience that, especially since Tolan had long believed no elementals could survive out on the waste. No one was supposed to be able to shape out on the waste, either.

  “In a way,” the Draasin Lord said.

  “And what way is that?”

  “What have you experienced in your time out here?”

  Tolan thought about what he had experienced, the way he had felt the strangeness of the elemental as it had pursued them, and the way he had very nearly not survived. It had attempted to draw from him, attempting to siphon power from him, and were it not for luck, perhaps something else, he wasn’t sure he would have survived.

  “The only thing I’ve experienced out here was the tainted elemental.”

  “That isn’t the only thing,” the Draasin Lord said.

  “The connection to hyza?”

  “You begin to understand.”

  “But I don’t.”

  The draasin settled his head back down, resting it as he breathed out a streamer of heat that blended into the distance. “The Guardians grow tired, Tolan Ethar. This is our responsibility. We will control this, but you have another responsibility.”

  “What responsibility is that? I thought that coming here, trying to remove the influence from the waste was my responsibility.”

  “One man cannot remove the influence from the waste.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “You need to find it within yourself. Understand yourself. Understand the connections you have made and how those connections make you stronger. Once you do…”

  The Draasin Lord settled fully onto the ground, and he breathed out again.

  Tolan waited for him to say something more, but he had a sense from the Draasin Lord that he was not going to, as though anything more he might want to say had already been said.

  16

  Tolan looked over at Ferrah. Her entire body was rigid, her gaze locked on the draasin. Tolan understood. He’d felt that way when he’d first seen the draasin as well.

  “He doesn’t want me to go to the Convergence.”

  “What would he do if you did?”

  “I… I guess I don’t know.”

  Tolan looked over at the Draasin Lord, and then considered his surroundings. F
rom here, there was a sense of the waste, a sense of its energy, but more than that, he could practically sense the Convergence. Having been in one, and having seen more than one, he recognized that sense.

  Looking over at the Draasin Lord, he considered staying here, or even leaving as the Draasin Lord wanted, but that wasn’t what he needed to do. Instead, he motioned for Ferrah to follow. The two started out across the waste, heading deeper into it.

  “What did he mean by Guardians?”

  “I suspect there are other elementals much like him.”

  “Another draasin?”

  “Perhaps.” But would that even be right? If what Tolan suspected was accurate, it wasn’t that there were other draasin out here. Instead, there were other elementals representing each of the other elements. That type of guardianship would be enough to protect this place in a way something else would not. And if there were other elementals, Tolan had to wonder if there was a way to connect to them, too.

  He had a connection to the Draasin Lord, and he had a connection to hyza, but he was able to speak to those elementals, at least in a way allowing him to use those connections.

  If he could use other connections, if he were able to find some way to understand just what it was he was capable of doing, a way he could use the power that was out here, then perhaps he could convince the other Guardians of what he needed to do.

  The problem was that Tolan wasn’t entirely sure what he needed to do.

  All of this had begun with a pursuit of his mother, and she wasn’t here.

  Even as he strained, using earth and water and wind, adding fire and even spirit, he didn’t have a sense of her.

  She might have started by coming out across the waste, but she didn’t remain here.

  This was a ruse.

  Tolan stopped, turning and looking all around.

  Why would she have used a ruse like that?

  “What is it?”

  “I have been struggling with something.”

  “Ever since we got out here, we’ve been both struggling with something.”

  “This is a little bit different. In the time that we came out here, I’ve been trying to get a better sense of where my mother was going, and have been chasing the sense of her, trying to see if there was anything we might be able to uncover about where she has gone, but even as I chased that sense, it became more distant.”

  “Tolan. We’re out on the waste. There is no sense of anything out here.”

  “That would be what she would have expected as well. I think she would have anticipated we would have been out here and that we wouldn’t have found any answers.”

  “We haven’t any answers.”

  “Only more questions,” Tolan said, grinning. “Only she wouldn’t have known I have the ability to use shaping out here.”

  Without having that ability to shape, and without his mother knowing about that, he had to think more like her. He would have to focus, trying to come up with what she would have done, the reason she would have brought him out here.

  And that reason was to distract him.

  What did he know about her?

  His experience with her had been limited. Tolan had memories of her, but he no longer knew how many of those memories were accurate or how many had been placed into his mind as fabrications. She was a powerful spirit shaper, and that meant it was entirely plausible she might have placed certain memories into his mind to force him to think about her in certain ways. What he needed to do was to focus on what he knew of her.

  What he knew of her now was limited, but it was about a pursuit of power.

  She had found it. She had that darkness—that chaos—and because of that pursuit of power, she had gathered up the Inquisitors, turning them against the Academy.

  What else did he know about her?

  It was more than about her pursuit of power. She had used his father. She had placed a shaping on him, having him place and create bondars that had required considerable power, and that would have given her control over the elements—and the elementals.

  It had to be more than that.

  When he went back further, thinking deeper into his past, deeper into the past of a mother he never really knew, he came up with other answers.

  There were answers out there, and as he thought about what he knew, he recognized those answers were still there.

  She had gone across the waste.

  That was the first truth he knew about her.

  It was more than just being the daughter of the Grand Inquisitor. This was a fact of what he knew about her. She had studied at the Academy, she had trained as an Inquisitor, but what he now knew about her suggested everything she had done had been a pursuit of power.

  She knew how to navigate the waste.

  And if she knew how to navigate the waste, and she knew what was out here, including knowing about the tainted elementals, then she would have known he was a danger to her.

  “I keep thinking she wanted me out here for some reason.”

  “You don’t know her. She’s not the person you think she is.”

  Tolan turned Ferrah, taking her hands and locking eyes with her. “I know. I might be her son, but she isn’t the mother I believed her to be. That’s not what I’m getting at, though. She came out across the waste and she searched for power until she found it. She found the Convergence.”

  They had been walking while they were talking, and as they did, a sense came to him, a steady building of energy that suggested they were nearing some place of additional power. He could feel it around him, and he could feel that sense rising from someplace deep beneath the ground.

  The Convergence was nearby.

  There was nothing other than a vast expanse all around him. There were rocks stacked almost as if they had been tossed, and there were aspects of the waste that left him thinking this place had once had life within it, especially knowing the Convergence was here. Now there was nothing but an emptiness.

  It was that emptiness that called to him.

  That emptiness had once called to his mother.

  She must have known how to find power. If it was here, and if he could feel it, then he had little doubt she had felt something similar. Knowing what he did of her, the way she had pursued that power, he couldn’t help but feel as if she had found what she was looking for out here in this location.

  This was where the Draasin Lord didn’t want him to go.

  Standing where he was, he could feel a sense of energy pressing in upon him, not just from beneath him. That sense of energy came from a deep source far beneath the ground.

  It was the Convergence, but what he felt around him was not.

  The Guardians.

  “It’s here,” he said.

  “What is here?”

  “The Convergence.” He closed his eyes, focusing on what he could sense of it. “I can feel it. It is somewhere deep beneath us.”

  “Similar to how it is in Par and within Amitan,” she said.

  Tolan nodded. Within those places, the sense of the Convergence had been muted, something he wasn’t aware of until he had reached the chamber containing it.

  Out here, there didn’t seem to be anything restricting his awareness of the power that was present. It was almost as if that power was meant for him to detect, something seeping up from everywhere all around him.

  Would that be what it was like in Amitan and Par had the towers not been there?

  Both of the towers had similar features. They both had runes marked along the surface of the buildings, drawing power from all around. Both were in places of considerable elemental energy as well, though he wondered how many people knew that or whether it was only him now.

  The only reason Tolan knew that was because of what he had read in many of the works Master Minden had shared with him.

  He shook his head, opening his eyes. “It’s here, and yet, I think the reason we don’t feel it anywhere else beyond here is because of the Guardians.”

&n
bsp; “You think they’re holding onto the power of the Convergence?”

  “They’re holding onto something, though I’m not entirely sure what it is they’re doing.”

  “You could ask him,” Ferrah said.

  Tolan smiled. “You were there. I asked the Draasin Lord already, but I have a sense he thinks this is something I should stay out of.”

  “How are you getting on regarding your mother?”

  Tolan frowned, bringing his thoughts back around. “I was just thinking about what she might have done. I was thinking about the nature of what she knows. She was able to navigate through the waste in a way few others have been able to do and survive. Not only that, but she is connected to this sense of chaos. What if she has an ability others don’t?”

  “Which is?”

  “To be able to shape out here.”

  “You have that ability,” she said.

  “I do, which is why I think she wanted to bring me out here.”

  “Why?”

  Tolan turned in place, and while he did, he couldn’t help but wonder.

  There were questions, but he didn’t have answers.

  More than that, he had to wonder if perhaps he had been guided here, and not only guided, but used.

  “I think we need to return to the Academy,” he said.

  “I thought you wanted to find your mother.”

  “I don’t think she’s here.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I can’t be sure. Not entirely, but I think she had another reason for having me come to this Convergence.” Tolan turned in place, looking around, feeling the energy of the Guardians.

  This was a Convergence, but he suspected there were only a few reasons they were protecting it. It was possible it was twisted and tainted, the same way his mother had been twisted and tainted. It was also possible they were guarding it, trying to defend it against the possibility of influence.

  What had his mother told him?

  She had wanted him. Maybe not him particularly, but she’d wanted his unique combination of gifts. It was why she had married his father. She had had a child as a way to reach for power she wouldn’t have otherwise. She had done so as a way of trying to force a combination of shaping abilities that didn’t exist otherwise.