The Council of Yoran (The Chain Breaker Book 12), page 1
THE COUNCIL OF YORAN
THE CHAIN BREAKER BOOK 12
D.K. HOLMBERG
Copyright © 2023 by D.K. Holmberg
Cover art by Damonza
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Author’s Note
Series by D.K. Holmberg
CHAPTER ONE
Gavin Lorren, the Chain Breaker, carried with him an undercurrent of violence.
It was a familiar sense for him. He had grown up around it, had come to know the feeling quite well, and had even learned to appreciate the way it felt, though he no longer hungered for it like he once had. There had been a time when he had chased violence, when he had believed that was his purpose.
Gavin did not feel that way about it any longer. Now it was simply a part of life, and, unfortunately, a part of who he was.
He checked his sword sheathed at his side, ensuring that it was ready. Mostly, he ensured that he was ready. He was not going to be caught unaware and unprepared. No. He intended to make sure he was the aggressor. At least, if it came down to a fight.
These days, it always came down to one.
“You’ve been gone for a while.” Gaspar’s voice came through Gavin’s earpiece.
The metal enchantment in his ear connected to a thin silver chain that was pinned to his lapel. The enchantment was El’aras made, and in the time that Gavin had used it, he had not found any shift in its strength—not like there was with so many other enchantments. This one managed to remain functional, regardless of how often or how long he used it. Then again, he had pushed some of his own magic—power that he referred to as his core reserves—into the enchantment. He wasn’t sure if that had strengthened it or if he had modified it, as his connection to enchantments did change them over time.
“You ever have those moments when you feel like there’s something coming?” Gavin asked, looking out into the darkness.
With a bit of his core reserves flowing into his eyes, he could enhance his eyesight and turn the otherwise pitch-black darkness into gradations of gray he could see through. Even with that ability, he did not see anything other than the occasional swaying of tree branches in the breeze that gusted around him, carrying the smells of the forest. Those branches would help offer a measure of protection as well, so long as Gavin was here.
“I know what you’re saying, boy,” Gaspar said. His voice was hushed, as if he understood the danger that Gavin felt, though he was far from where Gavin was situated. “You don’t have to do this. There are other ways.”
“We’ve not found any sign of the order. How long have we been searching?”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the enchantment. At some point, Gavin half expected Wrenlow to pipe in, but then again, Wrenlow was busy with Olivia more often these days. Between her and his research, Gavin had come to leave Wrenlow alone as much as he could. The kid, as Gaspar called him, needed to have his time to himself.
“Too long, I suppose you’ll say,” Gaspar said.
“Too long. We don’t know everything they’re after.”
Gaspar grunted. “We know what they’re after.”
“What. Who. But not why.”
And that was the reason Gavin was willing to fight. For Alana. To learn what the order wanted with her. To find out whether there was anything he could prevent from happening. To understand who she was, because Alana didn’t remember. And more than anything, Gavin had begun to believe that understanding who and what Alana was might be the key to understanding what the order intended.
Gavin knew they wanted power, despite Tenender’s claims when he still lived. It was the kind of power that had been absent from the world for a long time, and the order chased it. Everybody chased power, from Gavin’s experience. The problem was that some people should not have it.
“Alana said she wants you here with her,” Gaspar said.
Gavin smiled. “She didn’t say that.”
“You want me to put her on?”
Gavin hesitated. “Well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing for me to have a conversation with her.”
Alana was as close a thing to a daughter as Gavin thought he’d ever have. He was strangely protective of her. He’d always felt that way about her. Well, not always, but ever since meeting her and having the experiences he’d had with her, he had felt as if he needed to offer her protection she wouldn’t get otherwise. And it seemed that she appreciated it.
“Have you seen anything?” Alana’s far-too-chipper voice came through the enchantment.
“Nothing but the night.”
Gavin could imagine her sitting on the floor inside the fortress, folding pieces of paper as she made different enchantments. She would form them, and oftentimes she would give them to him to activate with his connection to magic. When he did, something changed within them. Neither Gavin nor Alana really understood what it was, but it did seem to modify things.
“You sound uneasy,” she said.
“You can hear that through the enchantment?”
“Maybe it’s not what I hear. It’s what I feel. The dragon is uneasy, Gavin.”
He flicked his gaze up. He couldn’t see the dragon, though he knew it circled above him. At this point, it was as near a living creature as was possible. Having received power from Gavin and, strangely, connecting to other types of power in the world, the dragon had continued to change. Evolve, as it were. It was something he didn’t fully understand, but it was something he knew to be important.
He didn’t feel uneasiness from the dragon. The only thing Gavin could tell about it was that there was a distinct sense of alertness. That alertness, however, could mean many things when it came to the dragon, which was an enchantment that had powers far beyond what Gavin could fully fathom. “The dragon might be uneasy, but you don’t have to worry about it. It’s safe.”
Alana laughed softly. Gavin was pleased she could still laugh, despite being the target of the order.
“I’m not worried about the dragon. I think it’s stronger than you now.”
He frowned. The wind had shifted, and now it carried a different undercurrent to it. There was something that reminded him of rain and damp earth, but it was fleeting. He had been feeling other senses all around him, so when it came, it was a distinct shift from what he had been feeling. It put him on edge.
He turned slowly and focused, pushing out with his connection to the seeker trees that surrounded them. He didn’t borrow their connection very often, only when he felt it completely necessary, but in this case, given that he had turned this into something more than just a pursuit, he needed the seeker trees. Gavin found that he could use both the seeker trees and the bralinath trees, though one type tended to be better than the other at times. He wasn’t sure which one to choose now. He hadn’t even been sure that the trees would respond to him, but he was thankful that they had agreed to this. Because with them, and what they were capable of doing, it was a matter of agreement.
“I’m going to need to go quiet for a little while,” he said to Alana. “Make sure to tell Gaspar that I will let him know if anything happens.”
He didn’t have to say that she would probably know if something happened to him. With her connection to the dragon, along with the other enchantments Gavin had access to, it was highly likely she would.
But he didn’t want her to worry. That was part of the reason he was willing to face the dangers he did. This was something that he could do. The order might be comprised of men and women who had far more knowledge—and possibly even training—than him, but Gavin was a fighter in ways they were not.
“He says to be careful,” Alana said.
“I’m always careful.”
Alana laughed again. Then she fell silent.
The wind turned once more. This time, as Gavin stared off into the distance, he knew that something had happened. He wasn’t sure what it was, only that he could feel some difference in the darkness of the night. Rather than moving, he instead drew on one of the patterns Imogen had taught him, which granted him the ability to search beyond where he was. It was an interesting use of magic, and one that was different than what Anna had wanted him to understand about his El’aras connection.
Given Gavin’s predilection for fighting and his understanding of that skill set, this technique served him better than any of the El’aras patterns. Using the Leier fighting styles allowed him to summon magic far more readily, and powerfully, than he otherwise would be able to.
He formed what he referred to as the tree pattern. He knew Imogen had a more formal name for it, but in his mind, it was nothing more than a tree. He used that pattern, visualizing the power of a bralinath tree, which connected him to the ancient El’aras elders so that he could probe downward and stretch roots that reached far beyond him. That allowed him to connect to the seeker trees and then beyond them as well.
When he did, the faint stirrings of other aspects of power fluttered around him.
At first, there was nothing more than just the quiet of the forest.
If it was only that, then Gavin wouldn’t have detected it quite as strongly as he did. Instead, he was acutely aware of that energy, and acutely aware of how it pressed against him, leaving him feeling a sense of tension.
He slipped his hand into his pouch, grabbed several of the paper ravens Alana had made, and activated them. Doing so involved little more than connecting to his core reserves—a buried part of himself that he had long ago learned to unlock—and pushing that magic into the enchantments. They quickly unfolded, hovering in the air with nothing more than a slight flutter of their wings. He had already learned how to rapidly connect to their power, and in doing so, he began to see what they could see. Gavin could look through the darkness by augmenting his own eyesight with his core reserves, but the ravens didn’t even need that.
Each raven seemed to have a different connection to the darkness, giving him an easier way of seeing what spread out around him. One of them saw things in shades of white and gray. Another seemed to see heat, which left flickers of orange. And still another saw shadows Gavin couldn’t identify easily. The three ravens he’d activated all had different means of visualizing what was around him, but his mind could synthesize those images and convert them into a single vision he could then use.
So far, Gavin saw nothing. Just the swaying of the seeker tree branches, and…
Not branches.
Something was moving through the forest.
It was slow, steady, and difficult for him to identify using just the ravens, or the dragon, or even his tree pattern.
There was something to it that struck Gavin as surprisingly powerful, and yet he also understood that it was designed to bypass the various defenses he had placed—a perimeter of enchantments around this building, not only to protect himself but also to set what he intended in motion. The seeker trees themselves offered a measure of defense, but he did worry they might be overwhelmed by the power of the order if they came.
Well, if the order came in full. Gavin had not seen the order attack with its full potential in quite some time, and he didn’t want to risk damaging the trees if he didn’t have to, as they were an ancient part of the El’aras. At least, they had been. The seeker trees understood some other truth, though. It had taken him time to come to that realization, and it was one that only he had. Anna and the other El’aras didn’t share it with him., thinking he misunderstood the purpose behind them.
By connecting the bralinath trees to the seeker trees, he could issue suggestions. Not commands. Gavin didn’t dare think that he could command these sentient trees. He could ask for their help, however. And so far, the trees had been willing to grant him that protection, and had been willing to provide him with assistance.
Eventually, Gavin wondered if they would abandon him, as he was not truly El’aras. It might come to a point where they questioned whether they should be serving him.
The seeker trees slowly started to shift, moving in a circle that formed around the small, squat stone building he had attached a series of markings on to draw in the order.
As soon as the seeker trees began moving, the massive shape in the forest started to lumber toward him. A tremble echoed through the ground with a sense of power that Gavin had not anticipated.
He unsheathed his blade, holding it at the ready.
Enchantments? No. He would’ve felt something. More than that, the protections circling this stone building would have detected something and triggered a defensive reaction.
If not enchantments, it could be sorcery, but that didn’t fit with what he knew of the order. They had magic that preceded sorcery. It was older, more arcane, and far more complicated. Unfortunately, it was also the kind of power that Gavin didn’t fully understand.
The creature that appeared before him looked like an enormous monster made of earth and stone. Gavin had fought creatures like that before, but this one towered above him, easily taller than the seeker trees, and those were each nearly a hundred feet tall.
The seeker trees spun their branches at this monster, but it would do no good.
Gavin pushed through his connection and suggested to the seeker trees to give this monster space so that they didn’t harm themselves in the process of trying to stop it.
The monster slowed.
“What do we have here?” Gavin said.
The creature looked down at him. Gavin didn’t move, and instead he continued to push outward with his tree pattern, trying to detect whether there was anything within that pattern of the creature. When it came to the order, the problem was that there were quite a few aspects of power he was not all that familiar with. They had connections to power that Gavin had been struggling to learn, and they had the resources to test and study such things for a much longer time than he ever had.
The tree pattern illuminated something for him this time.
Not only that, but as he held on to this power, it connected him to something deeper and showed him a blooming energy from the bralinath trees, the gift they had given him for serving as the Champion of the El’aras. Or, as Gavin had come to learn, the Champion of their power, as it was not so much about him serving the El’aras as it was about serving the continuity of that power so it would not fade from the world.
That knowledge revealed a technique.
Gavin pushed with that pattern, and it splashed over the monster.
A series of markings that were etched along the monster’s body became visible. There had to be a hundred or more of them. They were all in different patterns, mostly symbols, though some looked like geometric shapes in unusual positions on the creature. A few were on what Gavin would consider the knee, a couple were at the waist, most of them decorated the chest and arms, and at least two dozen ran along the creature’s head.
“I don’t suppose you have some way for me to overpower these markings,” he muttered, but he didn’t expect the ancient power to respond to him. It never did. All he really needed was insight.
Creatures like this could be stopped. More than that, Gavin knew, creatures like this could be turned to his benefit.
At least, that had been his experience. With the markings worked all along this creature, Gavin questioned if such a thing was possible. This was more enchanted than anything else he had ever encountered—even if this wasn’t even an enchantment.
Could I target some of those markings?
He’d spent far too much time thinking. The creature took another step toward him and tried to stomp on him.
“That’s not nice,” Gavin said, and he jabbed upward with his blade, empowering it with his core reserves and drawing on the power of the bralinath trees. By pushing all that energy up into the sword, it began to glow, taking on a pale blue energy as he stabbed into the creature’s foot.
