Cycle of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 11)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Would he bring this friend to his death as well?

  Honl touched his arm and smiled. “We all make choices for ourselves, Tan. Even the elementals make choices. They accept the consequences, as must you.”

  Tan knew that Honl was right, but it didn’t make it any easier to like it. Losing even one friend was difficult. He’d struggled losing Asboel and still hadn’t fully gotten past that. He should have power enough that he wouldn’t need to lose any friends. With his ability to use the elements and the elementals, he should be a strong enough shaper that he should be able to prevent their loss.

  Only, he wasn’t the Mother. He could control himself, not his friends.

  They reached the first of the Voidan creations. Tan shaped spirit, lancing it through his sword, and created a binding that helped the archivists. Working together, the shaping constricted, pulling them deeper and deeper into the shaping until they were nothing more than specks of dust.

  He pivoted, turning to the next attacker, this one a pair of disciples. They attempted to use the darkness on him, but the archivists assisted and together they blocked them. Using spirit, he destroyed their connection to Voidan, leaving them purged of its touch.

  One after another he went, facing disciples and shadow creations, accumulating more and more shapers fighting alongside him. They became a torrent of shapers, one that could not be overwhelmed, fighting their way toward Marin.

  Tan saw her as little more than a smear of shadows.

  As he neared, he glanced over at the friends who had joined him. All now fought alongside him, but shaping on one side of him were Roine and his mother, with Cora and Elanne on the other. Amia had taken his hand.

  When he’d been in the pool of spirit, he’d felt the connections and had considered part of it his family. He realized now that he had been partly right. This was his family. All of these shapers, all of them willing to fight with him, to come with him and face this horror, they were his family. And he would fight for them, just as they would fight for him.

  A sudden urge made Tan send a shaping of spirit washing over them, drawing through the spirit bond, binding them all together.

  There had been awareness of them through the bonds, but it surged even greater.

  Tan smiled.

  We will end this together.

  He turned to face Marin.

  Darkness exploded from her, a mixture of shaping that combined Voidan with the elements. When it struck them, Tan felt as they were forced back, but almost as one, they resisted.

  She used another attack, but he could feel her power building through the element bonds.

  Tan diverted what she was able to draw.

  He didn’t work alone.

  Other shapers did the same, pulling on the power of each of the elements. Doing that allowed him to counter her shaping, at least that which was drawn from the elements.

  There remained her connection to Voidan.

  Marin had become a powerful shaper of Voidan, and she was close to the source of its power. Thick bands of dark energy raced toward them.

  Using spirit, drawing on the shaping with the help of Amia and the archivists, he attempted to resist.

  Her shaping was too powerful.

  It pushed against their shaping of spirit and started oozing through.

  A victorious grin appeared on Marin’s face. “As I said, Maelen, you are not strong enough to defeat me.”

  Tan maintained his shaping, those with him maintained the shaping, and still they were forced backward. The longer she managed to hold them, the more likely it was that she would push them toward the island and into the pool of Voidan. Marin seemed to be growing stronger as they went, the closer they came to the source of her power making her more powerful.

  Her smile widened. She knew the shapers weren’t enough. Tan knew it too.

  But he wasn’t only a shaper. That had never been his primary power. Even when he had managed to reach the element bonds, that hadn’t been his strongest connection.

  Help me.

  The call went out to the elementals, through each of the bonds, through spirit, and rolled away from them.

  Marin’s eyes widened slightly. She would have heard the call as well. Her skin began to blacken as she shaped, pulling more and more power, turning her body into some manifestation of Voidan.

  Tan watched with horrified fascination even as they were pressed back. What she did and what she became reminded him of the lisincend and how they had become twisted by fire. Was Voidan twisting her the same way, or had she already been twisted simply by attempting to reach it?

  Help me.

  Tan sent the message again. Marin’s transformation was complete.

  The shapers fought with renewed strength, but it still wasn’t enough. Draasin circled her, blowing fire at her, but it wasn’t enough. With a single flick of her wrist, she drew enough darkness to counter the draasin.

  Help me.

  Other elementals began to appear.

  There had been those fighting with him from the beginning, those that were bonded to the shapers, and those that willingly offered themselves to the fight, such as ara as it helped hold the archivists in the air. The coming of the elementals this time was like a rolling tide, like an avalanche of power. It started slowly, a rumble he detected through the element bonds, and built as they slowly made their way toward the battle.

  Hundreds of different types of elementals came. Many Tan had no names for, but he knew them, just as he knew those he’d bonded. They were each powerful in their own way, and fought with the power of the bonds.

  The dark shaping sending them backward eased.

  Tan allowed himself a moment of hope. Would they be able to halt her progress? Would they be able to stop her?

  Marin’s brow furrowed and she redoubled her efforts.

  No longer did she shape.

  There was no sense of it anymore from within the bonds.

  What Marin did now simply manipulated the darkness. She was Voidan.

  They were pressed back again.

  Elementals that attempted to get close failed. Tan had to maintain his connection to spirit simply to counter what she threw at them. There was no time for him to try anything more, though he knew a binding was necessary.

  How would they stop her?

  The island loomed behind him. Tan could feel the emptiness of it, could practically taste its awfulness. Alanna was still there, trapped, and if they didn’t find a way to stop Marin, they wouldn’t be able to reach her.

  As much as anything, that drove him.

  Help me.

  This time, he sent the call to the element bonds.

  He had shapers, he had elementals, and he had a connection to the bonds, but could the bonds themselves help in some way?

  They needed a solution, if it were possible.

  The call surged through the bonds, given life by the joining of spirit that he had added.

  The bonds responded, but not in the way that he expected.

  Honl appeared, drawing strength from the bond. Tan suddenly understood what had changed about him. Through the shaping, and through what Tan had done, Honl had become a manifestation of the wind bond.

  Kota appeared, powered by earth, joining Honl opposite Marin. Tan’s bonds were the manifestation of each elemental.

  Marin pressed out with her powerful shaping of Voidan.

  Nymid came as a soft green shimmering film and coalesced between Honl and Kota. Water surged through it, drawn from Tan and his connection to the bonds.

  Marin exploded with power.

  The bonds managed to hold it, to confine it.

  What of fire?

  Tan had no bonded, nothing since Asboel.

  Yet fire came as a swirling of heat, flickering out of the draasin, out of shapers—including Tan—and manifested as a draasin of flame. There was something almost familiar about the shape. The creature was massive, filled with the power of the fire bond, and added to the seal placed aroun
d Marin.

  Marin attacked with renewed fury. The manifested element bonds bulged.

  They would not be enough.

  Not without something else.

  Tan pulled upon spirit. Amia joined him, as did the archivists.

  Their shaping came from the spirit bond. When ready, he sent the shaping not at Marin, but at each of the element bonds.

  As one, they shook and increased massively.

  The bonds began moving, writhing in something of a pattern. That pattern began to take shape within his mind. Tan recognized it, but so did Marin.

  She fought, attempting to explode outward with the power of Voidan, but the element bonds confined her.

  Shapers added to the power, letting the bonds draw from them.

  The binding began to take shape.

  The blackness within Marin’s skin didn’t shrink, but she did. It was as if she were one of the creatures of Voidan that she had made. Slowly, she constricted, thrashing more and more wildly as she did until it was clear the element bonds were more powerful than her.

  Marin locked eyes on Tan and flashed a malevolent smile. “You’ve already lost, Maelen, you just don’t know it. You will never free her.”

  With another surge, the binding took hold and Marin disappeared.

  28

  Fire Reborn

  Tan didn’t dare release his connection to the shaping. He was exhausted, and if he did release it, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to reach it again. Instead, he held onto it and slowly, the connection to the elementals rejuvenated him, but they were fatigued as well. There was power within them, but it had taken something out of them to form the manifestation of the bond.

  “We need to find her,” he said, turning to Amia.

  She nodded but said nothing.

  Shapers near him were celebrating, but Tan didn’t dare, not yet, and not until his daughter was safe. Marin had claimed her like some sort of prize, and he had no idea where she would have brought her.

  “Come, Maelen, I will show you.”

  Honl took his hand, and together with Amia, they drifted toward the island.

  “Tan?” Roine asked

  He shook his head.

  “Where are you going, Tannen?” his mother called after him.

  “This isn’t over,” he said.

  “But it is. You stopped her.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t stop anything. That was all the elements, the bond. All of you,” he said, sweeping his hand behind him. “Not me. But this… this will have to be me.”

  As he turned back to the island, the exhaustion overwhelmed him.

  His shaping failed.

  Tan began dropping, and Amia dropped with him.

  Honl jerked on his hand, catching Amia, but Tan’s hand came free.

  In the distance, he could see the mound of darkness, that which he suspected indicated the source of Voidan. In the midst of it, there was a glimmer of light, barely more than anything, but enough… enough that he could see it.

  Alanna.

  She was so close… so close, and now he would fall.

  Help her, he sent as he fell.

  Let the elementals, and those he cared about, take over his task.

  Tan closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to sleep.

  The falling stopped. Heat surged around him, a familiar sense, one that he had known.

  Thank you Asgar.

  A snort of amusement came through his connection. Maelen.

  His eyes snapped open.

  The draasin of flame held him up, supporting him. His other bonded elementals had remained by him, but he hadn’t expected the manifestation of fire to remain.

  Tan understood why it had been so familiar.

  Asboel?

  Maelen.

  Power surged through him, and there came a flash of light.

  A bond.

  Tan gasped.

  There had been a void within him since losing Asboel, one that even joining to Light hadn’t been able to fill. How was it possible that he had returned?

  How is anything possible, Maelen?

  The Mother?

  Asboel snorted, and flames that seemed an extension of him streaked from his nose. Normally, the Mother, but this is you.

  How?

  You called to the bonds, and you called me out of the bond.

  I’m sorry.

  I would have been reborn eventually; what does the timing matter? And this form suits me.

  This is how you will remain?

  I am Fire, Maelen. Just as you created Water, and Wind, and Earth.

  What of Spirit?

  Asboel chuckled within his mind. You have already created Spirit, Maelen.

  He looked for Light but didn’t see her. He sensed her and knew that she was near, but she was not. Light?

  Asboel chuckled again. In a sense, Maelen.

  They reached the mound of blackness. Asboel flew around it. Tan realized that Roine, Zephra, Ciara, Cora, and Fur all had joined them. Honl brought Amia and she looked at Asboel with a strange glimmer in her eyes.

  But they were not the only ones to have come.

  All the shapers who had answered his call came, pressing inward toward the mound of darkness. They, along with the elementals, formed bindings as they went, driving back Voidan. Life returned to the island, possibly for the first time in a very long time.

  The presence of the darkness, of Voidan, filled him, calling to him.

  It was there, in front of him, filling a pool with its power. And above it hung his daughter.

  Light wasn’t Spirit. She was an elemental able to reach spirit, but she was not the manifestation of it.

  Alanna was.

  The elemental bonded to her had named her the Voice of the Mother, and Tan hadn’t understood before, but now he thought that he did. She was his daughter, his creation, much like the other elementals were his creation, those that sprang from the power of the element bonds and fused with spirit. A form of life, of creation, because of him.

  Can you fly me to her?

  I cannot get any closer, Maelen.

  Can you help?

  You have never needed my help, but you have always had it.

  Power flowed into him.

  Tan sat upright and drew upon fire, and managed to reconnect to the other elements: wind next, then earth, and water last. Touching upon them, he drew from the bonds, noting that something had changed within the bond, though he didn’t know what. Now was not the time to determine that answer.

  As he shaped toward the darkness, toward the pool of Voidan and to Alanna, he reached a barrier and was pushed back.

  He couldn’t reach her.

  “Tan?”

  He looked over at Amia. Honl held her aloft and she watched him, her eyes narrowed in concern. Tan reached for her, taking her hand and holding it. Could they get past the barrier together?

  When he tried, they were pushed back once more.

  There was a sense within him, that seduction of Voidan, almost as if a taunt. It called to him, and he resisted.

  Alanna looked over at him. The bright intelligence that he saw so often in her eyes blazed brightly as she stared at him. They were her mother’s eyes, the eyes of the two people in the world that he would do anything for.

  Voidan taunted him again, this time with more clarity.

  Tan understood. He could seal off Voidan, and he could hold the darkness back, but doing so meant that he would trap his daughter within.

  Had Marin truly won?

  Would he fail, in spite of everything?

  Horror dawned on Amia’s face as she seemed to understand.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  Zephra joined them. “What is it?”

  Tan swallowed, but his throat was dry. He looked around at the shapers surrounding him, friends and family, all of them working with him to do what they could to suppress Voidan. The darkness around the island changed, drawing inward, life blooming where the
bindings had been left, elementals returning.

  But all of it served only to trap his daughter more.

  Dark laughter filled his mind.

  “There’s a barrier around her, much like there was around Norilan.”

  “Can you pass through?”

  Tan shook his head. “There is no passing through. It’s not a barrier shapers made, not like that one was.”

  His mother’s eyes widened and her gaze shifted past him, looking to Alanna, who hung suspended, no differently than the artifact had once been suspended.

  This was the taunt Marin had made, the final defiance. He now understood.

  Amia shaped spirit, beating it against the barrier. Other shapers joined, but none were able to do anything other than bat at it uselessly. There would be no getting past this barrier.

  What they needed was someone able to reach the dark, to be able to control Voidan.

  And they had destroyed them all.

  The sense of dark laughter within his mind echoed once more.

  29

  Cycle of Light and Dark

  Tan approached the barrier, hopelessness settling into him. They might be able to seal off Voidan and prevent it from escaping, but they would not be able to reach Alanna. Tan could only imagine the horror she felt, the panic she must be experiencing, knowing that there was nothing they could do.

  Only… he didn’t see panic on her face. There was peace.

  Seal the darkness, Maelen.

  The thought came softly drifting into his mind, and he didn’t know if it came from her or if it came from Spirit. It could be either. Or both.

  Something could get through.

  No. I will find a way.

  There is no way. Seal away Voidan.

  Tan shook his head. Next to him, Amia sobbed, her shaping growing weaker. There were limits to shaped energy, and she had reached hers. Tan had nearly reached his as well as he continued to beat upon the barrier. He was drained. The fight with Marin had taken everything from him, leaving him with only what had been lent by the elementals.

  It will only fail again. As it has every time before.