Tolan landed near the draasin, reaching for him. “You need to wake up.”
The draasin didn’t react. Tolan worried about him. He pushed fire through the draasin, letting that sense of energy flow through him. There was a surge. The draasin bubbled with that energy, but nothing more than that.
The draasin was drained. Whatever they were doing had been pulling power from him.
Could that be how they were filling their orbs to continue to fight?
Tolan needed help him.
It would require power but going down to the Convergence wasn’t going to be the answer. He needed another option, and Tolan wasn’t exactly sure what that was.
Short of bringing the draasin someplace where he could restore himself, he didn’t know what he might be able to do.
Could he, though?
The draasin was enormous, and the idea of trying to use the warrior shaping to transfer him, to bring him somewhere, seemed impossible, but in order for the draasin to recover, he needed help.
Tolan started pulling upon fire and earth, drawing those through the connection to hyza, and let that sense build within him. He called to wind and water, holding onto that sense as well. And then spirit. As he added all of them, he grabbed onto the draasin and pulled that shaping.
He had no idea if it would even work. Most of the power was coming from fire and earth, and most of it was coming through hyza, but he had to try.
The shaping enveloped him.
It was unusual in the way that it struck. The lightning bolt slammed into him first, then slammed into the draasin, and it lifted them.
They hovered for a moment.
As they did, Tolan feared he’d made a mistake. If he wasn’t strong enough, he would crash back to the ground, all of his strength expended, and then his mother and her attackers would succeed.
He pulled on even more power.
That energy continued to build within him.
It exploded away.
They were carried, and when they reached the edge of the waste, Tolan could feel it, and suddenly power filled him in a way that it hadn’t, and he reached for the Academy, using the Convergence there, the runes around it, and drew even more strength.
That energy filled him and they landed in the free elemental land.
He looked over at the draasin.
The massive creature curled on the ground, not moving.
The draasin needed power. He needed strength and energy, and he needed to find some way to call it through him.
He let those elements fill him. The power of the Convergence was here, and though the bondar around it had been damaged, Tolan could still tap into that Convergence. He used earth, dragging the draasin with him, and brought him toward the Convergence, down into the cavern where the Convergence was found, and settled the draasin’s tail into it. It was the only part of the creature that he was able to move at this point. His strength faded, and he tried not to think about how the others—his friends—were dealing with his mother right now.
The draasin took a deep breath.
Tolan held his.
Power began to build within the draasin.
Tolan could feel it and could feel the connection forming between the draasin and the Convergence, and he could feel the energy bubbling up within it. It was an incredible sense.
The draasin rumbled.
Heat began to glow along his leathery skin. The spikes along his back started to burst with fire and heat. It was so much that Tolan had to back away. He shaped himself back up to the city, looking down at the draasin. Heat and fire continued to fill the draasin, and then an enormous roar exploded from the creature’s mouth.
The draasin leaped forward.
He made a circle, looking around the village, a steady rumbling echoing within him.
“Are you better?”
“You risked much bringing me here.”
“It was necessary. I don’t know what they were doing, but they were weakening you.”
“They were drawing my power off. That place already taps my reserves, and they were taking what remained.”
“Are you better?”
“As better as I can be.”
“I have to return. There are others there.”
“I have to return,” the Draasin Lord said. “The remaining Guardians need my help.”
“What happens if the Guardians are removed?”
“The waste will fall.”
“I thought you were securing the Convergence.”
“The Convergence protects everything.”
Tolan looked over at the draasin, drawing on the power of the runes, that of the Convergence here, and breathing in the power of the elements and the element bonds that existed all around him. In doing so, he could feel that power, and he could feel that energy swirling and surging. As it did, he wondered if it would be enough. He needed the strength of this place in order to recover, but he didn’t know if it was going to be enough. If he was going to be enough.
As he started to draw upon each of the elements, he looked at the draasin. “Can you get yourself back there?”
The draasin rumbled, and he breathed out a massive streamer of fire. “I think I can manage.”
Tolan smiled. “Good.”
With that, the warrior shaping slammed into him with a bolt of lightning called from the sky, and it carried him out and toward the waste. It carried him toward violence. It carried him toward danger.
That was where he needed to go. That was where the others were, and where he had to be. In order to help the other Academy shapers, to stop his mother, he was going to have to head into that violence—and find a way to stop whatever his mother planned.
24
Landing once again within the heart of the waste, the Convergence beneath him, Tolan could feel that something had changed. It took him a moment to realize what it was.
Master Minden was nearby, holding her hands in the air as she shaped. There was power flowing from her, though he worried that she was draining too quickly. He had to believe that there were limits to how much power Master Minden had.
“Did you rescue him?”
“You knew what I was doing?”
“I could feel it. It was an impressive use of power.”
“They were drawing power off of him. I had to do what I could in order to save him.”
“Did you?”
“I brought him to a Convergence.”
She clenched her jaw as another attack surged toward her. Tolan fortified it with earth and fire, reverting to the two easiest elements to reach within the waste. Somehow, he wanted to find a way to grasp water and wind as easily, but for now, he would have to focus on the two elements that he could hold onto.
“It’s unfortunate that we have not uncovered the key to making these bondars before,” Master Minden said.
“What would have changed?” He looked over at her. “Would shapers have come out here, found the Guardian elementals, and attacked them then?”
She pressed her lips together in a frown, using a surge of water as she pushed outward. “Perhaps it is for the best.”
“If this is targeting the Guardians, then I need to go and see if I can help the others.”
“There may not be much that can be done,” she said.
“I have to try.”
He drew upon a shaping, lifting himself into the air, and then pushed out with spirit.
Spirit was the element that was going to be the most limited here. It was one that was going to come from him exclusively, but he needed it in order to know where the other Guardians were. Surprisingly, awareness flowed into him, coming from a source that he hadn’t considered.
Hyza pushed that sense to him, giving him an understanding of how to find the other Guardians. They were situated around the Convergence, forming a ring around it.
All that was missing was spirit.
What if there was a spirit Guardian?
He headed toward the earth Guardian.
> Without having as much of a connection to water and wind, he thought that going to earth was the best solution first. At least with that, he could draw through hyza, using the earth bond in order to augment whatever he needed to do.
The earth elemental was strange. It was a mound of stone, shifted into a pile of rocks that reminded him something of jinnar, though much more massive. Moss grew along the rock, something that was unusual out in the waste. There were other scraps of earth and dirt and even grasses that grew along it, revealing that it was an earth elemental.
Much like with the draasin, a ring of shapers surrounded the elemental.
This time, they didn’t wait for him to get settled. They turned their attack to him.
All of them held an orb, and power burst from them as they turned upon Tolan, but he was prepared.
They were drawing upon earth, so he used fire.
Opposites, at least according to what he had always been taught at the Academy. They were contrast, but he knew how they could coexist.
Hopefully, they did not.
When the attack struck, Tolan turned it, forcing it downward, into the ground where it exploded.
It came unrelentingly.
They were continuing to draw upon the Guardian.
He had to try a different approach.
Could he turn the attack back toward the Guardian, returning some of that power into the elemental?
If he could turn the nature of the attack inward, focusing it there rather than upward, toward the elemental itself, then he had to think there would be a way to repair what had been done. As the attackers circled and focused on the earth elemental, they drained more power off it, and eventually, he worried the elemental would be harmed in the same way the Draasin Lord had.
Tolan didn’t have enough strength to be able to transport this elemental to the place of Convergence if it were necessary. He had barely managed to bring the Draasin Lord. If he had to do the same again, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to return.
Calling upon fire and earth, he used the combination, linking them in the same way as hyza was linked within his mind, the bond that had formed within him. By doing so, he was able to use fire to help combat the nature of earth coming at him, and he was able to twist it, turning it outward.
Toward the elemental.
When it struck, Tolan could feel it as it bounced free.
That wasn’t going to be the key.
Somehow, he had to turn that power back into the elemental.
Spirit.
It was the only element that seemed to connect in a way that would make sense for this to work. He had to find something for it to hold, and if he were to hold onto a shaping of spirit, then perhaps he might be able to twist it, turning it toward the elemental.
He focused on spirit, holding onto fire and earth, and with the three elements joined, power flooded into the Guardian.
The effect was startling.
There was a drawing sensation, and all of a sudden, power continued to pull free from Tolan, tearing out of him.
He’d felt something like that before.
It was the twisted elemental.
When that elemental had attacked, it had drained him, tearing power from him, leaving him almost dead. This was similar, though not the same.
In this case, there was no wildness to it. At first, there seemed to be some of that, but as Tolan held onto the connection to fire and earth, holding on to what he could detect through hyza, he recognized that the nature of the Guardian latched onto that bond rather than on him. In doing so, Tolan was able to send more power out, and he was able to direct it into the Guardian.
The elemental rose up.
It was enormous. Powerful. The massive earth elemental swung something of an arm outward, sweeping across the shapers, knocking them down.
Orbs went flying.
Tolan swept down, grabbing for those orbs, reaching for them before the shapers were able to recover and use them again.
The earth Guardian lumbered toward them, smashing at the shapers.
They were controlled, and he didn’t think they deserved to die. Not like that.
He needed to delay this.
Using wind, Tolan swept them away and tapped on them with a spirit shaping, knocking them unconscious.
At least they wouldn’t fight.
“They don’t know what they’re doing,” he said, hovering in front of the earth Guardian.
The earth elemental rumbled a response to him, though Tolan was only able to make out one thing of what he said: Guardian.
Tolan could feel the other Guardians, and he could feel the pressure from them, and he recognized that sense and that energy. The other attackers were targeting the two remaining Guardians. So far, the Draasin Lord still had not returned.
Was that what the earth Guardian was concerned about?
“I helped the draasin. I did what I could to restore him. He will return.”
The earth elemental rumbled again, and for a moment, Tolan understood. Guardian.
Through the connection that had formed with spirit, Tolan felt something else.
It was an image. It was a fluttering, little more than that, but as it came to him, he recognized the key.
The Guardian.
The Draasin Lord wasn’t the fire Guardian.
With a start, he thought he understood.
Tolan had experienced that other Guardian, and he had nearly died when he had faced it before. That was what the Draasin Lord had been concerned about. That was why he didn’t want to speak about the nature of the twisted elemental.
And that had to be what his mother had done when she had been out here before.
With a shaping, Tolan brought himself back to the heart of the waste, near the Convergence. Master Minden was there, and she was still battling along with Master Jensen and Master Stole, though the attack wasn’t nearly as vigorous as it had been. The Grand Master was there, and Tolan handed him the orbs that he had claimed, though all of them were powered by the earth Guardian, so they would be of limited use.
“I know what she’s after,” Tolan said.
Ferrah glanced over at him. “What is she after?”
“The twisted elemental. When we were here before, it attacked us. I thought it was something about the waste, but I don’t think that’s it at all. I think the twisted elemental was the original fire Guardian until my mother came here.”
A dark shadow began to loom over the sky. It was the draasin—the Draasin Lord.
Tolan focused on him, using a connection to spirit, and sent that shaping toward the Draasin Lord. “You haven’t always been the fourth Guardian.” The draasin rumbled from up above, and fire streamed from his massive jaw. “It was the twisted elemental we encountered, wasn’t it?”
“There is nothing that can be done for him.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“I stay as long as I can,” the Draasin Lord said.
“This wasn’t your task, though.”
“I do what’s necessary,” the draasin said.
Tolan thought he understood. The Draasin Lord had left from time to time, and when he did, it weakened whatever it was that they were trying to protect here at the heart of the waste. At the same time, the Draasin Lord was needed. Still, Tolan had seen what happened to the Draasin Lord. Over time, he became weakened, his strength depleted, and he had to return to a place of restoration.
The other Guardians didn’t have that need.
Why not?
That was the key that he needed to understand.
“What did she do when she attacked here before?”
“She separated the Guardian from the bond,” the Draasin Lord said.
“Why did you decide to take a place here?”
“I am connected to the bond.”
There was an arrogance to the way that he said it, but he wasn’t completely truthful. The draasin was connected to the bond—Tolan could practically feel the way that fi
re burned between them—but there was something different about the Guardians.
That was what he had to find.
With a shaping of fire and earth, he took to the sky and focused on the earth Guardian. He pressed downward, using each of the elements, needing to better understand and wanting to know just what it was that had allowed his mother to attack before.
A connection to the bond.
What did he know about his mother?
She’d come here before. She had sought out his father. She had wanted power, bondars.
That was what it was.
The bondars.
There had to be something similar here, but where was it?
He didn’t see it near the earth elemental, so Tolan brought himself over toward where he had seen fire before, where the Draasin Lord had rested. As he looked at it, there was nothing on the ground that he could determine. At least, not with his eyes.
What about with a sensing of the elements?
Pushing outward with spirit, Tolan probed at the ground, and he felt it.
There was a fragment of power there. It was considerable, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to detect it, but even as he focused on it, he could feel that fragment, the way that it sat there, damaged. It was where the Draasin Lord had rested. There was power, and, Tolan suspected, a bondar had been there at one time. Now it was destroyed.
What about the other elements?
If there was something similar, that was likely what his mother was after. He could see her wanting to destroy the bondars, though he wasn’t entirely sure what she hoped to gain by it.
“What would happen if the Guardians are gone?”
Tolan had believed that all of this was about gaining the power of the Convergence, but this Convergence was different. There was no life around here. There were no elementals. Whatever had been done here, whatever purpose there was for the Guardians, suggested to him that something had taken place here long ago that involved considerable power.
Why, though?
“A danger,” the Draasin Lord said.
“What sort of danger?”
“One that could destroy the elementals.”
A vision flashed into his mind, an image of something that the Draasin Lord had seen. In it, the elementals were attacked by the shaper, subjugated. Bonded. It was different than the way he was forming a bond with hyza—and possibly even the Draasin Lord. In this image, the bond was taken forcefully and given to a shaper. It augmented them, giving them strength, but it also damaged the elemental.
The Chaos Rises (Elemental Academy Book 6) Page 25