Marcella paused, crouching on the Shapers Path, looking down as she did. A shaping built from her and she sent it toward the ground and the people far below.
“What was that for?”
She cocked her head to the side, looking up at him. “What was what for?”
“The shaping.”
“There aren’t too many who have such affinity for shaping that they can detect it when others use it, Shaper Ethar.”
“I’ve always been able to detect when shapings have been used,” he said.
“You don’t think that’s unusual?”
Tolan shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s unusual or not, but especially since coming to the Academy, I’ve been able to detect it.”
“It’s an impressive ability. Is that why you were able to determine there was an attack taking place?”
“I could feel the buildup of a shaping, but not who it came from or what it was intended to do.”
“Why did you chase after the disciples if you didn’t know they were the disciples?”
Was this some sort of interrogation? Why Marcella and not the Grand Master? He would’ve expected it from the Grand Master, especially as he would have more reason to question Tolan after the attack but getting it from Marcella was surprising. It had been a week since the attack, more than that, and long enough that he shouldn’t have to worry about master shapers quizzing him on what he might have seen.
“Stupidity.”
“Stupidity?”
“I went after the sense of power. I shouldn’t have. The Grand Master made that clear.”
Marcella stared at him for a moment, and then she smiled, standing. “Good.”
She continued on the Shapers Path but veered off, heading toward the west. From here, the Shapers Path narrowed, and they were high enough over the ground that Tolan wondered if he would be able to even shape himself up to it. At least in Amitan, there was the hope of reaching the lower path, but out here, over the plains, there was no such hope. If anything happened and he crashed to the ground, would he be able to summon a shaping quickly enough to save himself?
He tried not to think like that. There was no point in it.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s my responsibility to test your shaping ability, and to help draw out areas where you might be weakest. You have shown some strength with fire,” she said, glancing back at him. Did her gaze go to his pocket where he kept the furios? He didn’t think so, but it almost seemed as if she looked knowingly toward it. “And if you are to progress beyond the first level, you need to be able to master a second element.”
“That’s the test?”
“You know I can’t share that with you, Shaper Ethar.”
“I just meant—”
“I know what you meant. And I’m telling you I can’t reveal what you want to know. There is more than just managing to shape a second element. If that were all it was, many of your classmates would be able to skip the first level. As you can see, none has done so, so there is more to it.”
There had to have been more to it. Part of the test to remain within the first level involved shaping in such a way he could reach the spirit tower, and regardless of how powerful many of the shapers were when they came to the Academy, having enough strength within shaping to lift themselves from the ground was something even those shapers had struggled with.
In the distance, the landscape shifted, changing from the rolling hillside to blue.
Tolan pointed, and Marcella only smiled. “That’s where we’re headed.”
“The ocean?”
She glanced over at him. “You say that as if it’s something to fear.”
“Not fear, it’s just…”
She ignored him, continuing onward. He’d never seen the ocean. That much water was so different than where he’d grown up near the forest and the waste. Traveling along the Shapers Path allowed increased speed, and they were able to make much better time than they would otherwise have been able to do. He knew Amitan was days away from the nearest ocean, but with the Shapers Path, it took barely more than an hour to reach it. And when they did, he stood over the Shapers Path, looking down at the water. Waves crashed along the shore. The sound, even from here, was impressive.
“What do you know of water shaping?”
Tolan stared down at the ocean. The shore was rocky, a cliff that seemed cut off, a sheer drop leading down to the ocean. The waves slammed into the rock, almost as if there were elementals within it trying to peel away stone, as if they were angry at the earth elemental.
“I don’t have any ability to reach water. I’ve been trying to while using the nyamin, but even with that, I don’t have much ability.”
“Relying upon bondars for all your shaping is only one way of succeeding. In time, we all must become confident and competent on our own. Especially if we’re going to be a shaper of any capability.”
She had to know about his bondar, didn’t she?
He resisted the urge to slip his hand into his pocket and use it. Even the Grand Master didn’t know about his bondar—unless he had some way of shaping spirit and had stolen that knowledge from him.
“Which is why I brought you here. There is something to be said about standing near the ocean, to feel the power of water. Even the weakest shaper is able to connect here, and when they do, when they can feel the way that water flows around them, they often will begin to master a connection to it.”
“I can see how powerful it is,” he said.
“See it, certainly, but what I’m suggesting is that you consider feeling it.”
“How?”
A shaping built, and a gust of wind slammed into him.
Tolan staggered back to the edge of the Shapers Path, fear coursing through his body, sending his heart hammering. The Shapers Path ended.
He fell.
He didn’t fall quickly. It was as if wind itself resisted him, holding him, but it was still faster than he was able to reach for fire. He reached for his pocket, gripping the furios, afraid if he were to lose it as he fell that he would be without, and when he struck the water, cold suddenly slammed into him, coursing through him. His breath was knocked out of his lungs.
Tolan splashed, trying to keep above the surface of the water, but he was no swimmer. There was no reason for him to learn in Ephra. There were rivers, but none so deep as to need to swim across. There were no lakes, and certainly no ocean. This was something he’d never experienced.
The water began to pull him down.
He struggled against it, trying to stay afloat, but without knowing how to swim, Tolan wasn’t sure he could.
Why had she done this to him?
There had to be an easier way of getting him close to the water, for him to know what it felt like for the water to surround him, something better than this.
Flailing his arms, kicking his legs, he attempted to do anything to stay above the surface of the water.
But it continued to pull him down.
As he sank, he took a gasping breath and was plunged deep beneath the water.
Waves crashed against him, washing him first one way and then another, swirling around him as if to shake him free. He continued to kick, struggling against the water, but he was pushed down and down.
Pressure of the water built, making his ears pop.
He wasn’t going to die like this. Not without having a chance to fight.
Could he use a fire shaping? Surrounded by this much water, he doubted he would be able to summon the kind of elemental power he needed in order to free himself, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t about to try.
Gripping the furios, he squeezed it, letting the runes press into his palm. As they did, he focused, drawing forth an image of hyza, and he strained.
For a moment, he felt steam, and there was the crackle of water as it hissed from the rising heat, but then that faded. Anything he thought he might be able to do failed. His power was cut off.
He contin
ued to sink, and his feet touched down on a soft bed of sand. His head felt heavy, pressure building within it, making his ears feel as if they wanted to burst. His eyes felt as if they might pop free from his skull.
Fire didn’t work, but he had summoned earth once before.
Could he do it again? At least with earth, he had contact with it, and maybe…
Tolan focused on the elemental jinnar. It was a powerful earth elemental, and he hoped he could use that earth elemental and connect to it, somehow bringing him to the surface, but there was no response.
He thought about the other elementals he knew, those that mixed more than one of the elements together, but there was no sense of a connection. He couldn’t reach water or wind. Earth and fire had already failed.
Great Mother!
Why couldn’t he reach it?
His vision gradually darkened, the pressure of the water making it difficult to see anything, and he had been holding his breath as long as he was able. With a gasping breath, he sucked in a mouthful of salty water.
He tried to cough, but there was no strength left in his body to do so. The sense of water filled him. Everything was turning black. All he was aware of was the washing movement of the waves.
Why would Marcella have done this to him?
The distant part of his mind, the dying part, started thinking about the various water elementals he’d read about, straining to remember. It was the only thing he could focus on. It was better to focus on the elemental and the power he could remember reading about rather than what was happening to him. It was soothing, much more soothing than the emptiness beginning to fill him.
Names of water elementals rolled through his mind, ending with the great water elemental udilm, one who had power over the ocean. If only the elemental would save him, but all elementals had been brought into the bond, and without any connection to the water bond, there wasn’t anything Tolan was able to do to save himself.
Emptiness. Darkness. Pain.
All of it slowly subsided, disappearing.
A vague sense of movement stirred, and he wished for calm and peace, for nothing more than an opportunity to rest. At least if he rested, he…
No. Resting meant death. And he wasn’t ready to die. He wanted to live. He wanted to know what it would mean to begin to shape. He wanted a connection to the element bonds. He wanted to stay at the Academy.
His mind began to clear and he realized he was moving, but more than that, he realized something had been shaped around him. For a moment, he thought it was the water elemental, but then he burst free from the surface of the ocean and Marcella hovered above the water, some shaping allowing her to simply stand there. With a surge of power that washed through him, he gasped.
He jerked forward. He took another breath. And then another. With each breath, his mind clarified a touch more. The darkness he’d been feeling and seeing was fading. His mind came back to him.
“You fool. You didn’t even try to swim!”
“I don’t. Know. How.”
“How does anyone not learn how to swim?”
He looked up at her as water dripped from his hair, running down his face. Everything within him throbbed, but mostly his head, leaving him with a pulsing headache. “I’ve lived in Ephra. There’s no water to swim in.”
“Great Mother,” Marcella swore, turning her back to him and lifting him with a shaping of wind.
They landed on the rocky shore and he sat there, looking out over the water. He wrapped his arms around his legs, pulling them close, each breath coming to him like a relief.
“You should have warned me you couldn’t swim,” she said.
Tolan sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts, struggling to clear his mind. “I didn’t know you would push me in.”
“You haven’t reached water, and Master Wassa thought all you needed was an opportunity to get closer to it. This technique of his works for others, and—”
“Almost drowning someone has worked before?” He coughed, clearing more water from his lungs. “What kind of technique is that?”
“There have been many techniques employed over the years to help people reach their potential.”
“And what does it mean if I nearly drowned?”
She met his gaze, and there was hardness in her eyes, enough that Tolan wondered if she had left him in the water for too long intentionally. Did she think she was somehow going to coax a connection to water out of him?
“It means water is not a potential element for you.”
“What if I haven’t managed to reach it yet?”
“You have failed with the bondar. That is the easiest way for us to help those with the right connection to water. The next—and least preferable for most—option is to do what we have just done. In your case, unfortunately it appears you have no real connection to water. While you may gain the ability to shape the other elements, water does not seem to be in your future.”
“Have others ever reached an element bond they failed through this shock therapy?”
“Those who fail to reach the element bond in this manner are never destined to shape the element.” She walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. “I can’t say none have, but in the years the Academy has kept records, none eventually developed that ability.”
It shouldn’t bother him. He had come to the Academy without the ability to shape at all, and the fact he was able to reach for fire was far more than he had ever hoped for himself. All he had wanted was to survive his days in the Academy, and so far, he had. Reaching for fire—even if it did require he used the furios—should be enough to be satisfied by.
Only, the longer he was at the Academy, the more he experienced, the less he was satisfied with reaching only a single element.
“What now?”
“We still have two other elements I need to coax from you,” she said.
“And what sort of shock therapy do you intend with them?”
“Who said anything about there being a shock therapy?”
“You did it this time, so I have to imagine you have another attempt in mind.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry, Shaper Ethar. You have some time to recover.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, but he also didn’t like that he had failed to reach water.
Maybe he could continue to work with the bondar, and if he did, maybe he’d finally find some way of connecting to the element. It was possible he was different, but how different did he think he would be? There were enough differences between him and other shapers that he’d like to be somewhat normal, if only for a little while.
She lifted into the air on a shaping of wind and hovered in place, waiting for him. Tolan took a deep breath, his lungs burning as he did, and focused on a shaping. He slipped his hand into his pocket, reaching for the furios, and with a burst of fire, launched into the air toward the Shapers Path.
11
“You have to focus more,” Ferrah said, sitting across from Tolan in their room within the first-level student quarters.
He held his hands on his lap, looking across at her, trying to suppress the rising frustration within him. She was trying to help, and she was helping. It was just that he didn’t have the necessary skillset to do what she was asking of him. She wanted him to use his shaping, create fire on command, and to do so without the furios.
Each time he tried, he had to focus on the elemental, and each time, he stayed with the same elemental he had been using before. It was hyza, but he didn’t have the necessary power to call upon hyza without the furios. At least, that was what it felt like.
The one thing he did possess was knowledge of the elementals. He had spent countless hours reading through the various volumes about them, and his memory was good enough that he didn’t struggle with recalling the things he’d seen and read. With that knowledge, he thought he could come up with perhaps a different elemental that might be a better fit. Wasn’t that the key?
At least, it was his key.
There were other elementals he could try. Some were incredibly powerful, and Tolan had no misconceptions about his ability to summon things like the draasin, or even hyza without the help of the furios. What of something like saa? It was a smaller elemental, at least in his experience, like a flicker, a sparking flame.
He focused, thinking of saa, drawing forth the image and memory of everything that elemental took. As he did, he felt a stirring deep within him. It was there as it always was, the steady stirring that came as he spoke to the elemental, summoning it to the forefront of his mind.
There came a streamer of smoke, and after it, there was flame.
It danced across the floor, curling, twisting, and through the flame, he saw a shape.
Saa was very different from hyza. Whereas hyza reminded him mostly of a fox, a mixture of heat and power, saa was wispy, true flame, heat and fury. It was strong in a way hyza was not.
He thought about the characteristics, thought about what he was asking of it, and he pulled forth that image, directing it into the flame. It began to grow brighter and brighter, power flowing outward from it.
Ferrah smiled. “That’s a good one. That’s got some real heat behind that shaping. Something like that might throw Draln off when you’re having your contest with him.”
Tolan had mostly forgotten about the duel, though he shouldn’t. Draln wouldn’t forget. A time would come when the other man would demand he duel—and Tolan had made the mistake of accepting. “According to Jonas, I need to do more than just throw him off.”
“I don’t really think Draln is going to try and kill you,” she said.
“I don’t know; we both know the kind of person Draln is. I wouldn’t put it past him to use this as an opportunity to hurt me in some way.”
“Of course, he’s going to use it as an opportunity to hurt you. You’re talking about shaping each other. Only one outcome can come from it.”
“I thought you were determined to help keep me from dying here,” he said.
“Fine, maybe there’s two outcomes. But in one of them, you end up hurt, or he does. The other outcome involves one of you dying. Now, we can avoid the second, but I don’t think we can avoid the first. I want you to be prepared for whatever he might throw at you. The key is remembering a way to counter things.”
The Earth Awakens (Elemental Academy Book 2) Page 13