The Earth Awakens (Elemental Academy Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Maybe there’s no shaping in it at all,” he said.

  Tolan ran his hand along the furios. It had the strangely smooth surface with the runes carved in to it, and he wondered if perhaps that were true. If it didn’t have anything to do with shaping, then how would he be able to re-create it?

  Sighing, he looked up. “I don’t know. Maybe this was a mistake.”

  “It’s not a mistake for us to try to understand more about the element bonds, but when we start adding the knowledge of the elementals into it, I do worry.”

  “I’m not convinced we’re adding a knowledge of the elementals into it,” he said.

  “But you’re trying to take what you know and what you can do and put that into it.”

  “Maybe, but…” He wasn’t sure exactly what he was getting at, only that he had thought there might be some link to the elementals in the creation of the bondar. At least, that was what Master Minden had suggested. Maybe there wasn’t anything to it. And maybe she had only said that to him to convince him to do something he shouldn’t.

  Tolan flipped through the pages in the book before stopping at the end, where it began describing the draasin. There were pages upon pages of information about the draasin. Everything in it fit with what he’d seen when Jory had attempted to summon the draasin at the Convergence. That draasin had seemed large, but some of the pictures within this book revealed creatures even larger. For some reason, Tolan had the sense the draasin were a more tangible type of creature, less made of flames and more flesh and blood. If true, why—and how—had they been placed into the element bond?

  Tolan replaced the book into his pouch along with the bondar. There was no point in continuing to work at it. He didn’t know enough, and it frustrated him.

  Taking the page marking the runes, he had begun to fold it up when something on it caught his eye. He unrolled it again and set it on the ground.

  Where had he seen that symbol? It was one that was on the furios, he was sure of it, and had felt it pressing into his palm often enough to know it would have been, but there was another place he’d seen it.

  Tolan removed the book on fire elementals from his pouch and flipped through the pages.

  “What is it?” Ferrah asked.

  He tapped on the marking. “This.”

  “One of the runes?”

  He nodded. “I’ve seen it somewhere else.”

  “It could have been down near the Convergence. You said there were runes we had to get through.”

  Tolan closed his eyes, thinking of those markings. They had been different from these. He didn’t think it likely he had seen them there. Where else would he have seen it? As he flipped pages in the book, he came across one of the stranger elementals, one for smoke that was called esalash and was different from shiron. On the page, there was a drawing for the elemental, but that wasn’t what caught his eye. Rather it was the notation below the name for the elemental. There was a picture.

  A rune.

  Tolan’s breath caught.

  “There it is,” he said.

  Ferrah leaned close and looked at the book alongside him. “It’s similar, but I don’t know that it’s the same,” she said.

  Tolan pulled the furios from his pocket and held it out, rolling it across his lap. “It is the same.”

  He pointed to the marking for the elemental, the same one he’d found in the book. That they were there and identical had to mean the marking was for that particular elemental. He chose another marking, this one a series of faint lines, and went flipping through the book. Near the middle, he found the symbol. This was for steam, ivay, and an elemental he had never attempted to summon, though he wondered if it would’ve helped when he had nearly drowned.

  Rather than searching one by one, he went to the page for hyza. He found a picture of hyza near the front of the book. He had long ago memorized the wording about the elemental, no longer needing to read about how hyza was a mixture of fire and earth, a strange connection, and instead he looked at a part of the page that he’d never paid much mind to. There, like with the others, was a symbol.

  “Great Mother,” he whispered.

  “Is it there?”

  Tolan nodded. “It’s here. It’s the same.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He rolled the furios so she could see it. At the end of the furios, where his palm often rested, was the marking for hyza.

  There had to be a dozen different marks, and so far, three of them represented elementals. Did that mean they all did? And if they did, were those the only elementals he could use the bondar to connect to? There was one for smoke and steam and for a mixture of earth and fire. He had used saa, so he suspected that was a part of it as well. Sparks—meaning iffin—would have to be there too.

  All were various forms of fire, and all things he hadn’t even noticed before.

  He unfolded the page again and grabbed for the book on earth elementals. As he went through it, he found each of the symbols much the same way as they had been on the furios, each matching up with a picture in the book on the elementals.

  “These weren’t runes at all.”

  “They could still be runes, but they might just be runes that represent power.”

  Tolan shook his head. “I don’t think that’s what this is. These seem to be some way of connecting to these elementals. I don’t see one for the draasin.” He’d spent enough time reading through that section of the book that the symbol etched there remained fixed in place. Two outward-facing triangles with the line between, one he could practically imagine representing the draasin soaring high in the sky. “And I don’t see any for some of the other elementals. There are only some of the elementals represented.” He suspected that just as with fire, the elementals indicated by the golan would represent various forms of earth, probably making it so that earth shaping was even possible.

  Why hadn’t he considered that before?

  “So, Master Minden wasn’t lying to you about that,” Ferrah said.

  “Did you think she was?”

  “I wouldn’t have expected her to tell you how to create a bondar, but at the same time, anything to do with the elementals is a little tricky. People are touchy about them, especially if you imply you’re using elemental power.”

  Tolan had seen that himself. There had been enough of that when it came to his offhand comment to Wallace to believe people would be odd and uncomfortable when it came to referencing the elementals, but there was something still troubling him.

  “If these aren’t runes, and they represent nothing more than the elementals, then where is the rune power?” Tolan asked.

  Ferrah shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  He sighed. Somehow, there needed to be some power from the rune magic. He believed that was a part of it, that it was somehow the key to how the bondar worked.

  “We could go and ask those who have made replicas,” he said.

  “I’m not sure that’s going to get us very far,” Ferrah said.

  “Even if we just ask nonspecific questions?”

  “Anytime you raise a question about bondars, the masters get touchy. There’s a fear that power will be abused, especially with something like the bondar, which allows people to connect so deeply to the element bonds. That’s why they’re guarded so closely.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure why the bondar would have images representing the elementals if they were only designed to help people reach the element bonds. Why elementals in that case? Why not something that represented the power of the element bond?

  Answering that meant another visit to the library, but he didn’t know whether Master Minden would be willing to answer him.

  Folding the sheet back up, he stuffed it into his pocket. It didn’t matter quite as much. Now he had a sense of where those markings could be found, he didn’t need to keep his document except for the fact it told him which elementals were marked on each of the bondars. And m
aybe if he uncovered something about the connectivity between the elementals more than what he already knew, he might be better able to use that knowledge.

  “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?” Ferrah asked.

  “Why should I? I think we’ve figured part of it out.”

  “At least do it smartly.”

  “And what makes anything smart about it?”

  “Making sure you’re not just throwing yourself out there when it comes to this power,” she said.

  “Seeing as how I can scarcely do anything shaping-wise, I doubt you have anything to worry about.”

  She studied him, and as she did, he couldn’t escape the concerned look on her face.

  Tolan smiled, but a different question came to him. The bondar might not be critical for connecting to the elementals. What if it was only tapping into their power, tying them to the element bond rather than the elemental themselves?

  There would be more testing, but he would need to do that himself. Ferrah wouldn’t want to be involved in it, and he didn’t blame her. She didn’t have the same need to reach for power outside of shaping the bonds, not the way he did.

  And if he could uncover some other way of reaching for power that didn’t require the bondar, then maybe he wouldn’t even need it, but the testing for the second level would be coming soon—and he wasn’t ready.

  “I don’t like that look on your face.”

  “There is no look on my face.”

  “There is. And I don’t like it.”

  Tolan looked away rather than meeting her gaze, not wanting to have to lie to her about what he was considering doing.

  16

  Tolan tapped the bondar on the table. The bondar for earth was solid, and he had no fear of breaking it. It was different from the bondars for the other elements. The furios was slender, and Tolan did fear the possibility he might break it if he weren’t careful, but with the bondar for earth, the golan, he didn’t think he could damage it.

  “Would you stop?” Jonas asked, glancing over at him.

  “I’m not trying to upset you,” he said.

  “Not that you’re upsetting me, it’s more that you’re disrupting me.”

  “Then wrap it up.”

  “You want me to be finished?” He nodded toward the front of the classroom. “Master Shorav told us we needed to continue working at these shapings until we’d mastered them.”

  “Have you mastered them?”

  “Well, this one I have. These weren’t that difficult.”

  “I’m not going to master any earth shaping,” Tolan said.

  “You haven’t even tried. You’ve been fiddling with that bondar the whole time we’ve been here. The least you could do would be to see if you could figure anything out.”

  Tolan glanced down at the bondar. In the time they’d been in class, he had attempted to visualize various elementals using what he knew of earth, trying to summon what he could, but nothing seemed to work. That didn’t surprise him. He had done the same each time they were in their earth classes, and he didn’t expect anything to change rapidly. Why should it? The only time he had seemed to have any effect with earth had been when he had been under stress. And that hadn’t even required him to have the bondar.

  “I don’t think earth is an elemental I’m able to use.”

  “You mean element.”

  “What?”

  “You said elemental. You mean element.”

  “It’s not an element bond I can use. I’ve tried using the bondar, but it’s not working for me.”

  They were able to leave when they were finished, and while Tolan would have loved to take all the time in the world to simply sit and experiment with the bondar, the fact it hadn’t done anything for him made it so he didn’t really care to stay. If he did, he would just grow increasingly frustrated at his inability to reach the element powers. There were other things he wanted to be trying, and if nothing else, he wanted to see if he could come up with some way of using the elementals with their symbols. He thought he was onto something, though didn’t know if it would work the way he intended.

  “You can go on. I’ll catch up with you later,” Jonas said.

  Tolan nodded, gathering his things, and was making his way to the front of the classroom when Master Shorav arched a brow at him. “Are you already done?”

  “I’m having an off day,” Tolan said.

  “An off day?”

  “I’m not able to get the bondar to do anything for me. I’ve tried, but my connection to earth is weak.”

  Master Shorav glanced at the bondar Tolan held before looking up at his face. “You have the ability to sense earth.”

  Tolan nodded. “I do. That was the element I was most connected to.” It wasn’t a secret anymore that he didn’t have much ability to shape before coming to the Academy. At least, not among the master shapers. There were still students who hadn’t known that, and while Tolan didn’t necessarily care if others knew, especially now he had a connection to fire, he didn’t really want word to get out to some of the others.

  “In the time you’ve been here, Shaper Ethar, you haven’t managed to successfully reach any of the other element bonds. I question your motivation.”

  “I would like to reach the other elements,” he said. “I’ve been working with Master Marcella, but she hasn’t been able to coax that ability out of me.”

  “Master Marcella was a good student, but she is inexperienced as an instructor.”

  Tolan resisted the urge to say anything about her teaching methods. He couldn’t imagine what she would try to do to pull earth from him. Would she try to crush him in some way? Maybe she would think burying him in a cave would somehow make him closer to earth.

  When he was younger, his parents had attempted various tactics to get him to have a connection to earth, knowing that with his sensing ability, he should have some. They had taken a more loving approach than Master Marcella had tried with him, though Tolan wasn’t sure what he would do if Master Marcella tried a loving approach. His neck started to get warm with the thought.

  He turned away from Master Shorav before hesitating. “Have you ever lent a bondar to a student?”

  “You understand the bondars are for classroom learning, Shaper Ethar.”

  “I understand, but I wonder if I had more time with it, I might be able to find my connection to earth. I know I can reach it.” Success was infrequent, and certainly not often enough to feel confident with his ability. It was a minor miracle he had managed to use earth when they had been attacked on the Shapers Path. And with the testing coming—everyone agreed it would have to be soon—he needed something to prepare.

  “You could petition the Grand Master, but I’m afraid I feel quite strongly the bondars must remain in class. They are far too powerful to be distributed within the school. You are still learning, and if you attempt a shaping without having the expertise needed, it’s potentially quite dangerous.”

  He smiled and set the bondar down. “I had to ask.”

  “You can spend more time here, Shaper Ethar. I’m willing to work with you outside of class if you are so motivated. You have a connection to earth; we just have to draw it out of you.”

  He should be reassured by that, and Tolan knew he should take Master Shorav up on the offer, but a part of him didn’t really want to. Despite what he knew he should be doing, he would almost rather work on his own. He thought he might be able to uncover more about his connection to the elements that way, and certainly more about his connection to the elementals.

  “That sounds good,” he said rather than upsetting Master Shorav.

  He turned away, heading out of the earth tower. Several other students had already left, though most of them were skilled earth shapers and didn’t need the extra time. He wasn’t surprised to see Draln and several of his buddies were already gone.

  There was no question Draln would quickly advance through the Academy. It would be just his luck if Draln one d
ay became an Inquisitor, and Tolan could easily envision him coming after him; Draln was the kind of person who would likely come after anyone he didn’t like, regardless of guilt.

  At the entrance to the tower, Tolan paused and looked around. The various element towers were each ornate in their own specific ways. Some, like the earth tower, had intricately carved stone, and he couldn’t even imagine how much effort—or earth shaping—had gone into creating it. There were carvings throughout, and Tolan had long ago realized those carvings seemed to indicate the various elementals, something that surprised him considering how the Academy trained the students to recognize the elementals and force them back into the bonds. But then, maybe that was the point of having the elementals carved into the sides of the walls. Being able to see them and recognize them was one way to be prepared for the possibility they might eventually need to counter them and force them into the element bond once again.

  There was a pattern to them.

  Tolan frowned as he stared up at them, realizing he hadn’t seen it before. The orientation to the elementals took on a specific shape, and the longer he studied, the more he realized there was a distinctiveness to it.

  Why hadn’t he seen it before?

  Tolan made a slow circuit of the tower. As he did, he pulled out a sheet of paper and then took a seat in the center of the entrance. Grabbing a pen, he started to copy the images of the elementals around the inside of the tower. He worked quickly, not needing to document the elementals exactly. He didn’t think that was the key. But what he wanted to do was to see if there was anything about the shape that would give him any clues. It was similar to the shape and patterns within the spirit tower. When he was there, he was convinced the spirit tower held a rune that marked a way of calling to spirit.

  “Look at this guy,” Draln said. Tolan looked up to find Draln with two of his friends in the entrance to the tower, looking out at him. He chuckled and sneered. “You look like a child sitting and drawing while his parents work.”

  “It sounds like something you have a lot of familiarity with,” Tolan said.