The Chaos Rises (Elemental Academy Book 6)

by D. K. Holmberg

  What had his mother done?

  The bondar didn’t reach into the element bonds the way others did. It connected to the Convergence itself. It spread outward, up into the structure around them, and out throughout all of this land.

  There was a reverberation within him.

  Tolan could feel that reverberation. It was an echoing. It rang from some place deep within him, connecting to another source.

  Another bondar.

  With a gasp, Tolan thought he understood.

  He grabbed for Ferrah, lifting her into the air, and they hovered there. He hung onto his concentration. The sense of the bondar continued to fill him, rolling through him, as did the answering call. When he pointed, he could feel it down below.

  “Everything here is a bondar,” he whispered.

  “Everything? All I see is the rune.”

  “The rune is formed along the streets, but the buildings… those are the bondars.”

  “How did your father create something like this?”

  “I don’t think he did.”

  “You were just saying—”

  “I don’t think he created all of this. I keep coming back to what I know. What I actually know, and not what was instilled within me by a shaping. I know that my father had learned the creation of bondars because of his parents.” He searched around the area. “All of this was because of my family, I think. Those that came before them.” Tolan hadn’t taken the opportunity to better understand the village here, but perhaps he should have. If they all were capable of creating bondars, was that what they were doing here?

  The symbols on the buildings took on a different meaning, and he understood the nature of the power that was here.

  It was all directed toward the Convergence, and all meant to spread outward, to help protect the elementals.

  He lowered himself back to the Convergence. If his father hadn’t done that, and he hadn’t built the bondar at the Convergence, what had he done?

  His home.

  Using a warrior shaping, he appeared in front of his father’s home. He pushed outward with a shaping, trying to gain an understanding of what was here. The building had hundreds upon hundreds of rune markings along it. The runes were incredibly powerful, and when he had first seen them when he had come here, he had believed them nothing more than an attempt to fortify his father’s home.

  This was a bondar. His bondar.

  Even when he had returned to his father, his father had attempted to keep working. His father had used the symbols and continued adding to the bondar.

  Could Tolan use it now?

  Shaping energy into it, he could feel the echoing sense, that power that his father had attempted to store within the bondar. It surged and spread outward from his home to the other homes.

  They were connected.

  Protected.

  He started laughing softly.

  “When we were here, we detected a hint of the darkness still within my father and the others. I detected that hint of the darkness within the elementals, and I thought that we had failed, but maybe that’s not it at all. I think they were protecting themselves. They knew enough with their connection to the bondars and the way they were able to shape them that they could use them to defend themselves.”

  “All of this was meant to do what?”

  “To suppress the chaos.” That had to be the purpose of the Guardians, though how would they hold it here? Now he thought about it, he realized that was the familiar sense of what he’d felt at the Convergence. That was here. Suppressed by the Guardians. Held in place. “Whatever it is that my mother is trying to unleash.”

  “Why did she need to come back here?”

  “Answers,” Tolan said.

  “What kind of… She needed to know how to break the bondar,” Ferrah said.

  It made sense. It would explain what his mother was trying to do and the way that she intended to act, but where? What was it that she needed?

  Hyza might have the answer.

  Tolan closed his eyes, focusing and thinking about the nature of the elements and the elementals, along with the bondars that were here. They were subtly done, the control over the power so exquisite that it managed to hold everything within it. This was the kind of power even his mother wouldn’t have been able to overwhelm.

  Only, as he pushed outward using his control over the elements, he could feel that something had shifted here. It was the way the elements had changed. The elementals had been moved, and in some sense, so had the village itself.

  She had uncovered that answer.

  She had learned to break the bondars.

  Thinking about hyza, he summoned his connection between the elemental, calling him.

  This was about the bondars.

  The connection is powerful, hyza agreed.

  There was no doubt in Tolan’s mind that the connection was powerful, and he could feel it, especially within his father’s home. There was power, even if it was damaged.

  Now that she has learned to break bondars, what would she do? Where would she go?

  She will bring them to a place beyond.

  Beyond what?

  Beyond.

  An image started to form in his mind, and though it was something of a vision, Tolan understood.

  There was a flash, a memory, something that he had seen.

  In part of it, Tolan saw the waste, but in another part of it, there was something else. The rocky outline of the waste was there, and through the vision the elemental gave him, there was something else within it. He could feel the presence of the waste and the nature of that emptiness as it pressed upon him. Even within that, he could feel the wild and tormented elemental that had attacked him. It was twisted.

  A place beyond.

  Beyond what?

  Within the image was the waste. Tolan had ventured as far as anyone across the waste, and by finding the place of Convergence there at the heart of it, he had found something he believed existed, but it didn’t explain everything.

  There were aspects to it that were not quite right.

  The elemental wasn’t guiding him toward the waste, but beyond the waste.

  She was dragging others with her.

  Hyza had told him something else. The Guardians protected the elementals.

  What would happen if the Guardians were removed?

  The Guardians would not be removed.

  He had seen that the Draasin Lord could move, but what if they all were removed?

  Tolan was convinced there was a Convergence there, and if something happened, and if that power were somehow tapped into, released by whatever it was his mother intended, then he had to understand it.

  What would happen if they were removed? Tolan frowned. There was something else about the way that hyza had answered that left him questioning. He said the Guardians would not be removed. Not that they wouldn’t move. Are they tied there somehow?

  The Guardians serve as a protection.

  Why there?

  A great danger exists where they are. One of many.

  With the realization, Tolan knew what he had to do.

  He turned to Ferrah and met her gaze. “We have to return to the waste.” He looked past her, toward the Convergence and the Grand Master. “And we need to find others who can help us.”

  22

  The top of the Academy tower was empty. Dark clouds smeared across the sky and occasional thunder rumbled, suiting Tolan’s mood. There was an energy to the air, mixing with the scent of coming rain, and the sporadic shaping all around left him wishing that there would be others who had this ability within the waste. Unfortunately, heading to the waste would be a journey taken without the numbers they needed to adequately protect themselves—or the elementals.

  “What if no one else helps?”

  It was a significant ask, trying to convince others who did not necessarily view the elementals in the same way to venture across the waste in order to try to protect them. How many others would b
e willing? He hoped the master librarians would, and it was the reason Tolan and Ferrah had come here, hoping that with the librarians’ knowledge and their ability to shape, they could offer something, but even in that, Tolan remained unsure.

  “They will help,” Ferrah said.

  “They don’t want to fight.”

  The idea of coming here and asking the master librarians for help seemed absurd. They were scholars, not fighters, but where they were going and what they needed to do required someone who had the ability to shape in a place where no one else could shape. It required those possessing a capability no one else had—not even the greatest of the master shapers—help save Terndahl.

  When he had suggested it to the Grand Master, he’d been unhappy at the suggestion, but how much of that was because Irina had opposed it?

  The librarians were valuable in this situation. Tolan needed them to join him, even though they still might find it difficult. Tolan believed they would be able to find some willing to help.

  The door at the top of the tower opened and Master Minden appeared along with the Grand Master. Master Jensen and Master Stole followed, but if Tolan expected others to come behind them, he was mistaken.

  “This is it?” Master Minden didn’t answer at first, and Tolan frowned. “What is it?”

  “Others have gone missing.”

  “My mother,” he said.

  Master Minden nodded. “Unfortunately, I fear that’s true. She must’ve realized the librarians posed a threat to her.”

  “Irina—my mother—has been gone for a while. If the others are missing—”

  “It means there remains someone within the Academy who was working on her behalf,” the Grand Master said. “Perhaps many someones.” He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before motioning for Master Jensen and Master Stole to take a seat. “I’ve filled them in as much as I can, but we aren’t sure we can even do this.”

  “I can carry us there,” Tolan said.

  “You can shape across the waste?” Master Jensen looked at him, a deep frown creasing his brow.

  “It’s a matter of recognizing that the difference in that land is a separation from the element bond, but it’s not a separation from the connection to the elements within you.”

  He didn’t like the idea of sitting here and discussing it. Every moment that passed, his mother was penetrating deeper into the waste. The only part of it that gave him reason to pause was that she would have to transport all the people that she had taken from the village, along with the elementals. Hopefully, that process would take too long to do quickly. If not, then she would reach the Guardians.

  “I don’t think the six of us will be enough,” he said.

  “I’m hopeful others will join us,” the Grand Master said.

  Slowly, the door opened, and others did emerge. They were master shapers, all of them. Master Sartan. Master Rorn. Master Shorav. Even master Wassa. All of the element masters from within the Academy. There were a few others Tolan didn’t know that well, though they were masters as well.

  Tolan smiled, but even with the new arrivals, he didn’t know if this would be adequate.

  “They understand the reason we’re going?”

  The Grand Master smiled at him. “I have been having conversations in your absence, Master Ethar. They understand. They won’t be able to shape, but…”

  “If we reach the Convergence, we should be able to,” Tolan said. “At least, that’s what I hope.”

  The Grand Master nodded. “That is my hope as well.”

  “Are we ready to depart?”

  Tolan nodded, looking around at the others with him, and he took a deep breath. The next step was going to be on him. He wasn’t confident they had the numbers they needed, and even if they did, he wasn’t confident that they would even be strong enough. His mother was powerful, and she had ways of using shaping that those within the Academy didn’t fully understand. He didn’t want them to overlook her ability, and he certainly didn’t want them to overlook what she might plan. She could harm them.

  “It’s going to be jarring,” he said.

  “All of us have gone into the waste before, Master Ethar,” Master Shorav said condescendingly.

  “To the heart of the waste?” He sent his gaze sweeping around them. “It’s different there. I suspect the librarians will be able to reach for some shaping energy within themselves, but the others… It’s going to be unsettling. The faster you adjust, the better equipped for this that you will be.”

  With that, he drew upon the energy around him.

  In order to do this, he was going to have to use a single shaping. It was going to be a warrior shaping, but it was going to be one that drew upon not just the shaped energy he possessed, that of the elements and the element bonds, but also that of the runes surrounding the tower and the Convergence below it. He would use all of that to bridge the distance. The moment they reached the edge of the waste, everything would shift. He had to connect to something else, something deeper, so he didn’t grow weakened before he completed his task.

  Taking a deep breath, Tolan breathed it out and connected to the elements, wrapping them around him. A surge of power swirled, and it carried him.

  The warrior shaping was unique. With that shaping, he was able to transport great distances, often in little more than a blink of an eye. In this case, it happened quickly until he reached the edge of the waste. With as many people as he transported, he was aware of that transition point, and he could feel the nature of it shifting.

  He continued to draw from the Academy, from the runes and the Convergence, but the edge of the waste separated him from that power. Then he began to draw from the elementals. He could feel hyza feeding him power, and it was just enough to finish the task.

  He landed in the heart of the waste.

  Heat struck him.

  The others gasped and he looked around, worried the sudden jarring nature of coming this far into the waste would be more than they could tolerate.

  The Grand Master took a deep breath and, surprisingly, smiled. “I’ve never been this deep into the waste. Prior to you, Master Ethar, there weren’t many students who were willing to venture very far into it. There were some. The Academy, and Terndahl, have often sent people out into the waste to search for signs of what was beyond, but we never uncovered anything.”

  The idea of finding something beyond triggered a memory within Tolan. It reminded him of what hyza had told him, and of the nature of what the elemental had suggested his mother was trying to do.

  “You feel the Convergence is here?” Master Minden asked.

  “It is here,” Tolan said. He made a circle, and when he did, he could feel that energy deep beneath him. It was far below the ground.

  If hyza was right, the Guardians were serving as a protection against something. But against what?

  “We won’t be able to remain here for long, Grand Master,” Master Sartan said.

  The Grand Master nodded. They didn’t have supplies for a lengthy stay. He suspected they all had food and water, much the way that Tolan did in case something happened, and they needed time to recover and to prepare for whatever else they might have to face, but not enough to return by foot to the Academy. It was going to require him to get them back. If he failed…

  Tolan wasn’t going to think about what would happen if he failed. If he did, that meant his mother succeeded, and that whatever she planned, whoever she was serving, had succeeded.

  “We need to ensure the safety of the Guardians,” Tolan said.

  “How do you expect—”

  The Grand Master didn’t have an opportunity to finish. There was a burst of shaping energy that came from somewhere nearby.

  Tolan turned toward it, using the sweeping form of earth in order to defend against the sudden shift of shaped energy. He wasn’t going to be able to draw upon power that often, and certainly not with much strength. The nature of the waste was such that it would deplete him rapidl
y.

  Someone was able to shape out here.

  He knew that he wasn’t going to be the only person with that shaping ability, but he hadn’t expected that his mother was going to be the one.

  Someone joined him, and the power of shaping energy flowed from them. Tolan glanced over and saw Master Minden holding her hand out in front of her, her wrinkled face tense in concentration.

  “Go. Find out what it is.”

  “She shouldn’t have been able to reach us yet.”

  “She has outmaneuvered us all along,” Master Minden said.

  Tolan glanced at the others. “We need to find the Guardians. The draasin, along with the other three. That’s the key here.”

  “I can find one,” Ferrah said.

  “And I will do what I can,” Master Minden said. “You need to see if there’s anything you can do.”

  “I will go.”

  With that, Tolan took to the air, shaping himself forward.

  He held onto power, drawing it from himself, from the connection to hyza, but it was not going to be enough. Even as he traveled toward the sense of shaped energy he was able to detect, he was all too aware that the power he was calling upon was inadequate for what he suspected he might face. There was considerable energy here. Despite his best efforts, he wasn’t going to have enough strength. It was going to require reaching for the Convergence, but what if that was a mistake? If he opened the Convergence for his mother as he had within the free elemental land, would he be exposing something for her that she needed?

  He was the reason she had accessed the Convergence there, and he wasn’t going to be the reason that she was able to access the Convergence here.

  Not that she wouldn’t know about it, otherwise. She had ventured out into the waste, and likely had encountered the Guardians, and that was what kept her away.

  Tolan had to stop her. He had to prevent her from achieving her goal, but it was going to be more than that.

  There were elementals that needed his help. They were trapped within her influence. There were people who were still trapped within her influence. Somehow, he was going to need to find a way to protect them and offer them healing.