A Fading Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

“There has to be a different way to help them. I can’t keep healing in this way. It takes too much out of me,” Tolan said.

  “You must.”

  “I don’t know that I can.”

  “You must.” Rory said it with a harshness and a blast of cold wind that suddenly died down again.

  “Why?” Tolan got to his feet, looking at the edge of the wall. Ferrah stayed with him, looking down at the landscape far below.

  Some of the elementals that he had restored had remained near the tower. Others had disappeared, though Tolan was still aware of them. They hadn’t gone very far. He wondered if perhaps they had gone off to track down some of the other elementals, instructing them to come here. If they did, Tolan didn’t know that he would be able to help all of them the way that they needed and wanted from him. “Roland has been defeated. He won’t be able to use you the way he intended before.”

  “He has not gone.”

  Tolan frowned. “What do you mean? He’s been in my land.”

  “He is not gone.”

  Tolan glanced over at Ferrah. He detected unease within her. Not that he could blame her. She was troubled by Roland, troubled by the possibility that he might continue to cause harm to Tolan. In this land, if Roland were to attack, she’d be limited to the power that she could connect to through the orb bondars.

  When that was expended, what would she do?

  Nothing. That was the problem. She wouldn’t be able to shape the way that she needed to, and she wouldn’t be able to draw upon the power that she would need to. She would be unable to shape.

  “If we have an opportunity to stop him, to find him, and to prevent him from harming the Academy, then we must do it,” Kerry said.

  Ferrah watched her and leaned toward Tolan. Before she had an opportunity to say anything, Rory swirled with power.

  “I can show you.”

  “Is it safe to do?”

  “We don’t need to go far.”

  Tolan held out his hand to Ferrah, and he started to call upon the sense of wind and fire, but even as he did, weakness overwhelmed him.

  He turned his attention back to Rory, shaking his head. “I don’t know that I can go quite yet.” He looked over at Kerry and saw her watching. Would she be able to carry them? She was powerful, which irritated Ferrah, but she would have limits as well. In this land, they all had limits. “Doing all of this, helping all of you, has taken too much out of me.”

  “Then let me help,” Rory said.

  Wind swirled around him, lifting Tolan and Ferrah, carrying them outward. At the same time, something bloomed within him. It was a sense of power that connected to him. It was from the lizard. That power was spirit, but it was also the power of the other elements, coming from the element bonds. Tolan drew upon it, letting it fill him this time rather than using it to help the elementals.

  In the back of his mind, there seemed to be a sense from the lizard that he should have done this all along. Perhaps he had made a mistake by not calling on that power before. He had been working to help the elementals, and he hadn’t focused on what he needed. That was the mistake.

  Gradually, Tolan could call upon more power, and he found himself reaching through the lizard and to each of the element bonds in order to draw on the energy he needed to restore himself. He added that to the power Rory used and they moved more quickly.

  As they traveled, he was aware of power everywhere around him.

  This land was strange, but it didn’t need to be strange. There was something about it that he thought he could reach through, if only he could better understand the land. It was that way with many places. Even within the Academy, it required that Tolan better understand the land around him and use that knowledge to reach for power that was often beyond him.

  Ferrah gripped him, looking all around with concern and clenching her jaw. He tried to push out with spirit to reassure her, but he wasn’t sure if that would be effective—or if it was even necessary. He was concerned, and he wasn’t about to try to dissuade her of her feelings.

  “How much farther do we have to go before we reach him?”

  Rory slowed and the wind swirled around him, but not with the same force. “It’s not far now.”

  Tolan pushed outward with his sense of power, holding onto the connection he shared with the element bonds along with the elements, and searched for something within that connection.

  Awareness of the lizard was there within him.

  Connected as he was, Tolan tried to dive deeper into spirit to use that power. Even as he drew upon spirit, he didn’t detect anything more that provided him answers.

  He glanced over at Ferrah and found her looking at him.

  “It’s almost as if I can shape,” she started, speaking against the wind. “I can sense the elements. This close to the wind elemental, I can feel the wind. I just can’t use it.”

  “I still think there has to be some way to connect you here so you can use it.”

  “You’ve been saying that for a while, but I’m not as convinced that’s the case. Just because you believe it to be doesn’t mean that it is so. I would like to be able to shape so that she’s not the only one able to do so.” She nodded at Kerry.

  Rory continued to guide them forward. The wind elemental swept them west, heading slightly northward. The landscape changed. He crossed over the enormous forest, and from there Tolan noticed rolling hills. In the distance, a mountain range rose far beyond them, though he didn’t have a feeling Rory guided them in that direction. Other than the tower, there was no other sign of human life in this place Beyond.

  That surprised him.

  Tolan had expected to find a village. Cities. Something. Roland would’ve had to have come from somewhere, but there was no sign of any settlements.

  If Rory had the ability to communicate more effectively, Tolan might have asked the elemental, but Tolan had a feeling through his connection to spirit that the elemental remained troubled. There were things that Rory simply didn’t know, experiences that he had lost. Tolan didn’t want to torment the wind elemental by asking questions about subjects he knew nothing about.

  Tolan had a vague sense that they were drifting farther and farther away from the waste. That troubled him. With everything else that he’d been through, understanding the power within the waste seemed to be the most important piece. He might not fully grasp that power, but he believed the waste had a purpose.

  More than ever, Tolan felt as if understanding that purpose was important to what Roland intended.

  The ground started to change. A few stunted trees grew, twisted and stretching toward the sky. Some of them had fruits growing upon them, though there was something sickly about those fruits.

  “I thought you said this wasn’t far,” he said.

  The elemental swirled around him, briefly taking on a more human form before fading again. “It isn’t.”

  They started to slow and Tolan glanced over at Rory. There was energy coming from the elemental that swirled around, almost a sense of urgency—and anxiety. Tolan recognized it. He had detected something similar from the elemental before.

  He was afraid.

  What did he fear?

  Even afraid, the elemental guided him forward, as if determined to prove that he was willing to do what was necessary.

  The ground shifted again. Now there was a rocky expanse in front of him. The rock was similar to what he experienced in the waste, though not quite the same. Much like in the waste, there was no significant sense of earth from it, though were Tolan to probe at it, he thought that he could feel a little bit of energy coming off it, a hint of a connection to earth here. He certainly could feel the other elements, though it seemed to him that they were fainter than what they were before. Not that his connection to the elements was all that great here normally.

  The elemental carried them up and over the rocks, drifting slowly and almost carefully. The wind swirled in front of them, and it took Tolan a moment to realize what w
as taking place. Rory was using the wind in a way that masked them. Tolan added his own connection to wind, along with that of spirit, to augment the masking. He had no idea why Rory felt that it was necessary to do so, but if there was something out here that concerned him, he wasn’t willing to test it.

  “What is that?” Kerry pointed toward the black expanse in front of them.

  Tolan wasn’t entirely sure what it was. He could see something in the distance, though all he could do was see it. He couldn’t feel anything from it.

  It was an absence. A void.

  That troubled him.

  For there to be a void like that meant that something had changed.

  Even though he struggled to reach the element bonds in this land, he could still reach them. The fact that there was something out there that felt empty—that felt much like the waste—struck him as troubling.

  Could Roland have uncovered the secret of the waste?

  Tolan stared into the distance. It was dark, almost as if the rock itself swallowed the light around it. He tried to focus on whether there was any element power within it, but didn’t detect anything.

  It was like the waste.

  “It’s a waste,” Tolan said, motioning to Ferrah.

  “We’ve headed away from the waste,” she said.

  “Not our waste. A waste. Focus on how it feels, about what you detect within it.”

  A shaping built from Kerry, and her eyes widened. “I don’t detect anything within it.”

  Tolan held onto the shaping to mask her, suddenly more concerned.

  This was dangerous. Whatever Rory brought them to put them into danger.

  It put Ferrah into danger. Kerry. All of them.

  With only the orb bondars to protect Ferrah, she didn’t have enough power were they to get into trouble. Kerry would be limited as well.

  “You need to bring her back,” he said to Kerry.

  “I can stay here,” Ferrah said. “I can help with whatever you intend.”

  She pulled the orb bondars from her pockets, clutching two of them and holding them out toward Tolan. She began to shape through them, power coming off her. Even with them, Tolan knew she still wouldn’t be able to pull upon as much power as what she needed to ensure her safety.

  “If Roland discovered some way of recreating the waste, then I don’t know that it makes sense for you to be here.” It would be easier on Kerry, though not necessarily easy.

  “I don’t have any power here anyway. No more than I do in the waste.”

  “Ferrah—”

  She locked eyes with him. “I’m not leaving.”

  Rory sent wind swirling around them. “I can carry her away if it becomes necessary.”

  Tolan regarded Ferrah a moment more, but she ignored him. “If something happens,” he said using a connection of spirit targeting Kerry, “I want you both to leave. Get to the tower, then shape back to Terndahl.”

  Tolan was accustomed to Ferrah arguing with him, but Kerry said nothing and simply nodded. They floated onward, heading toward the vast expanse of nothingness. Tolan tried to make sense of what he detected but didn’t come to any conclusions.

  Whatever this was didn’t separate him from his connections. He could still shape, and it seemed the elemental still had power, though he began to feel Rory starting to fade, sagging toward the ground.

  Tolan began to push power toward the elemental, adding what he could.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said to Rory.

  “It is not much farther,” he said.

  “Where are you trying to take me?”

  If Tolan knew, he could use the warrior shaping and transport them.

  “There,” Rory said.

  He hovered, the power coming from him more halting than it had been. It was almost a jerking sensation as he tried to use the wind to keep him in the air. Tolan added fire to the wind, mixing it together so that they could stabilize and stay in the air more effectively.

  Far below, there was an opening in the ground.

  It was a deep and massive pit, but it wasn’t only that which drew Tolan’s eyes. It was what he could detect from that pit.

  Power.

  Considering the absence of everything that he detected around him, this sense of power struck him as surprising. Tolan probed at it carefully, using each of the elements as he attempted to determine what it was and why he should detect something so powerfully.

  There was something familiar about it.

  “Is that a Convergence?”

  He hadn’t detected any Convergences in this land before.

  If it was a Convergence, there was something about it that was off. It didn’t radiate the same connection to the elements that he felt elsewhere. Perhaps that was because in Terndahl and the surrounding lands, the connection to the Convergence pushed outward, tying to the Guardians at the heart of the waste. This one was separated.

  Was that the only reason that it felt different?

  He was tempted to probe outward, pressing for that energy to see if he might be able to find whether that was the only answer or if there were other possible explanations.

  It would be dangerous, though.

  “He’s trying to create a place of power,” he said, whispering.

  “How?”

  Tolan wanted to get closer to better understand what Roland attempted. He found himself drawing toward it. Ferrah grabbed him, using the orb bondars in order to sweep power toward him to capture him and hold him in place.

  She glared at him. “What are you doing?”

  He shook his head, trying to shake off the odd sensation. “I’m not entirely sure. I could feel something.”

  He stared at the pit. It was the power of the Convergence, but it was incomplete.

  That was what he needed to understand.

  He looked over at Rory.

  Rory struggled. It seemed as if the emptiness of power all around him made it difficult for the elemental. Tolan needed to get Rory away from here.

  Ferrah struggled as well. Neither of them could stay where they were.

  “We should go back,” he said.

  Rory started to fade.

  Tolan reacted, pushing more power into the elemental. He used a hint of spirit, connecting to the elemental, binding him to the wind.

  He hadn’t expected that it would tear off his own strength.

  They started plummeting toward the ground.

  Ferrah reacted, using her orb bondars to keep them aloft. Kerry added a shaping to it, and he could see Ferrah’s irritation. “Thanks,” she said quietly. Kerry nodded. Ferrah looked at him. “It’s pulling away from me,” Ferrah said through gritted teeth. “Somehow, this power is getting drawn off of me. Look at it.”

  She motioned to the orb bondar, and Tolan realized just what was taking place. As she had said, the power within it was getting called away, drained free from the bondar.

  He tried to draw that power back to himself, but he wasn’t sure if he could.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said.

  “I’m trying, but…”

  Ferrah looked up at him, her eyes wide.

  She was using the power, but it wasn’t working. Tolan could feel her attempting to shape but failing.

  Ferrah wasn’t the only one failing. Tolan recognized that something was separating Rory from his power. Kerry strained, a shaping streaming away from her, though not as potent as it had been. Even Tolan wasn’t going to be able to help for much longer, either.

  A warrior shaping.

  Tolan thought that he had enough power to do that, but it was going to have to be quick. Maybe Kerry could do the same.

  “I need you to go into the orb bondar,” he said to Rory.

  The elemental looked at him, and a pained sense came through him, the connection to spirit giving him a sense of what the elemental felt.

  “I don’t how much longer I’m going to be able to hold onto my own power, and until we get out of here, I fear w
e will lose you.”

  “I can hold myself together,” the elemental said.

  “It’s not a matter of you holding yourself together. This is more a matter of you being able to escape with me. I can use a particular shaping, but it’s a difficult one, and I think you will need help.”

  He looked at the elemental, and Rory seemed to hesitate.

  Tolan didn’t blame him. What he was asking was something painful for the elemental. He had just connected them to the element bonds in a way that should give them enough strength, but out here in this place, he still didn’t have enough power to protect himself.

  The strange Convergence pit continued to draw on him, pulling power away. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold out,” Tolan said.

  He reached for one of the orb bondars that Ferrah held, and he pushed the power out of it, burning off the shaping. He held it to Rory.

  “I can use this for you. I can call power into it. And I can release you as soon as we get free of here.”

  Rory swirled around him, becoming slightly translucent for a moment before that faded. Then the elemental headed into the orb bondar, diving deep within it.

  Tolan could tell it pained the elemental, but as he faded into the bondar, it filled with power. He glanced over at Kerry.

  “Can you use the warrior shaping?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I think that I can. All it will take will be for me to—”

  The power around him surged, making it so they struggled to keep in the air.

  They had to act quickly.

  Tolan reached for each of the elements. There was resistance against him. That resistance grew increasingly potent. He tried to draw more power from the elements. Each time that he attempted to do so, something resisted him. It was the power here. This strange Convergence that felt as if it were drawing everything off the land around him. Tolan struggled against it, trying to call to the power here, but it fought him.

  He looked over at Ferrah, locking eyes with her. A worried expression was on her face. She knew he was struggling.

  Kerry started to fade. She was strong, but not strong enough here.

  He had to help. He hadn’t prepared for this.

  Could I borrow from Rory?

  The elemental was trapped within the orb bondar, but his power was still there. Tolan didn’t want to use stolen power like that. It was a betrayal of the elemental. He might be able to use one of the other orb bondars.