The Fire Within (Elemental Academy Book 1), page 21
“And what happened?” Ferrah asked.
“The image of the elemental I generated was identical to what I saw in the forest.”
Ferrah studied him for a while before shaking her head. “You didn’t release an elemental,” she said.
Tolan frowned. “And what if I did?”
“You can’t have freed an elemental. It takes more than simply shaping one in the image of an elemental you’ve seen before in order to do that.”
“We don’t know that. I went to Master Wassa, and I asked him about freeing elementals—”
Jonas leaned forward, his eyes going wide. “You went to one of the master shapers and you asked about freeing an elemental? Are you insane?”
Tolan shrugged. “After the attack in the courtyard, I wanted to know. I think he understood the reason I asked.”
“And what reason was that?” Jonas asked.
“After Teddy and Janey were injured, we don’t know what happened to them. It’s possible they freed an elemental.”
“I doubt two second-year shapers could free an elemental,” Jonas said.
“That’s what Master Wassa said too. He told me that pulling an elemental out of the bond is about more than simply shaping strength. You have to have knowledge, but what happens if you use something to assist you?” He pointed at the furios. “When I was playing Imaginarium, I used this. Now, I’m not much of a shaper normally, but what happens when I have anything I am able to do augmented through the furios? How does that change things?”
Jonas stared at him for a moment before letting out a slow whistle. “I suppose it’s possible,” he said.
Ferrah shook her head. “It’s not possible. It’s not just about power, like Master Wassa said.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know,” Ferrah said.
Tolan frowned. “What aren’t you telling us?”
She shrugged and look away.
“Ferrah?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” he said.
She glanced toward the door, tipping her head to the side. Power pulsed from her, and he wondered if she was checking the strength of the shielding she had placed around the door. She must have been content by what she found as she looked over at him, shaking her head. “You wondered why I’ve been looking into the history of Par?”
“It’s your homeland,” Tolan said.
“I just thought you were strange.” Jonas grinned and she shook her head at him, as if she wanted to strike him.
“There have been stories about Par over the years. In all of them, they talk about it being a place of power for the elementals. I wanted to know if there was anything to it. I always have. When you live in Par, and you see the dioramas…” She closed her eyes, letting out a long sigh. “You start to wonder if there’s something else. Something more.”
“What does this have to do with elementals and the bond?” Jonas asked.
“Because I’ve looked at the dioramas, and I’ve looked through all of the records that I could find here on the history of Par. The people of Par used to live among the elementals.”
The words hung in the air for a moment.
Jonah started laughing. Ferrah shot him a look but he ignored it. “You realize what you’re saying? You saw what happened in the courtyard. You saw what that thing did. People couldn’t live with that. They would’ve been destroyed.”
“What if they could?” Ferrah asked.
Tolan thought about what he’d seen from the elemental creation that he had made. Maybe it had only been his imagination, but if it was an elemental—if he had somehow freed it from the bond—there had been a spark of recognition. If it was nothing more than his shaping, then maybe that was the reason for the spark of recognition. But if it was something else—a true elemental—then he was left with different questions.
“It would take some way of communicating with them,” he said softly.
“Now the both of you are insane.” Jonas leaned back, smiling widely. “I’m the first to admit I’m intrigued by the elementals, but I’m intrigued by them in the same way I’m intrigued by Draln. They’re both powerful, and both dangerous. I know well enough to stay away from both of them.”
“Everything I’ve seen has shown me it’s incredibly unlikely for anyone without some sort of connection to the elementals to be able to pull them from the bond,” Ferrah said, holding Tolan’s gaze.
“Like the Draasin Lord.”
“Like the Draasin Lord. Think about it. How else to think that he has been able to be so successful when it comes to the elementals? He has to have some way of connecting to them.”
Tolan closed his eyes, thinking of the elementals he had seen—really seen. First in the forest when he had seen the fire elemental, and then in the courtyard.
He didn’t count the one he had seen in his vision. It might’ve been the same as what he’d seen in the courtyard, but it wasn’t one he had ever seen in real life, not before the attack on the courtyard.
“I can’t shake the feeling I somehow did free an elemental,” he said.
“I’m with Master Wassa,” Ferrah said. “I still don’t think you had the necessary knowledge.”
He sat silently for a while before nodding to the doorway. “You can lower the barrier.”
“That’s it? We’re done?” Jonas asked.
Tolan turned to him. “What else is there?”
“You’re just going to drop this?”
Tolan looked over at Ferrah and caught her watching him intensely. “She’s right. I don’t have the necessary knowledge.”
“Good. Because we need to keep studying,” Ferrah said. “You never know when they’re going to test us again.”
That didn’t mean he couldn’t search for it. It meant going to the library, and it meant searching with the help of the librarians, but he needed to know whether what he had seen was real or only imagined.
13
It was easy to get lost in the library. The room was enormous and took up most of the main level of the Academy, and Tolan had taken to going to the library as often as he could, wanting to take every opportunity to look into information about the elementals and their connection to the bond. For the most part, it had been wasted time.
He pushed the book away, rubbing his eyes. How late was it? It felt like he had been here for hours, though he doubted it had been that long. Most of the library was empty now, leaving him and Ferrah as the only ones here other than the librarians.
“I’m not finding anything,” he said.
“I told you that you don’t need to keep looking,” Ferrah said. “We should be studying what we’ve learned in our lessons.”
As she often did, she had a book in front of her that had some likely obscure reference to Par. Tolan had given up on trying to determine what she was reading about, and it seemed almost as if she and Master Jensen had some secret project they were working on. Every so often, a new book would appear on her stack, and always something Master Jensen had found for her.
“There’s something here. I don’t know what it is, but I’m determined to find it.”
Ferrah looked up from her book. “It’s been two weeks, Tolan. There hasn’t been any sign of any rogue elemental you might have freed. If there were, we would’ve heard.”
Tolan breathed out. In those two weeks, he had gone through the motions at the Academy, continuing to work on his shapings, growing somewhat more competent with fire but none of the others, and still he hadn’t detected anything that would make him think he was any closer to finding the rogue elemental. There had been no reports of any rogue elementals out in the city. Then again, if there were, Tolan wasn’t entirely sure he would hear about it. As nothing more than a student at the Academy, it was possible he wouldn’t be privy to those things.
In that time, he’d tried looking around the Academy, thinking he’d find Master Daniels, but he hadn’t found any sign of the man. He was supposed to be here for his refresher on elementals, and with everything Tolan had uncovered in the books, he thought he might be able to help. The longer he was here, the less likely he thought it was that he could find anything.
“You’d be better off devoting your attention to continuing to work on fire shaping. At least with that, you’re showing promise.”
“With the bondar,” he said, whispering it. He didn’t need to, especially as the only other ones in the library were Master Jensen and Master Stole, an older woman with thinning hair and cheeks that seemed to droop. Master Jensen every so often looked their way, but Master Stole never looked up from her work. In that way, she reminded him of Master Minden, but Tolan never had the sense of someone shaping, not as he did with Master Minden. “I can’t do anything without the bondar.”
“It’s a transition. Think about how many students are here who need the same trick. Eventually, you will get it. I can see it.”
Tolan breathed out. If he managed to reach fire without the bondar, he would then move onto trying to master one of the other elements.
“I’m glad one of us can.”
“You do know you have been doing good work. Think about how far you and Jonas have come with your shaping.”
In the last two weeks, Jonas had surpassed Tolan, though that wasn’t entirely surprising. Jonas had some natural fire-shaping ability even before coming to the Academy, and time spent working with the bondar had only honed it. He was determined to master it, and practiced daily, late into the night, to the point where even Tolan didn’t stay with him.
“Jonas will be almost as good as you soon,” Tolan said.
“You say that as if that bothers me.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Why would I care if my friends improve? I want the two of you to continue to get better. Isn’t that the point of coming to the Academy?”
He nodded. It was strange. When he had been in Ephra, a part of him had always suspected Tanner had wanted him to keep failing. Here, he had the support of two people who both wanted him to succeed. “What will you do when you can start shaping spirit?”
She let out a heavy breath. “Well, seeing as how we haven’t even started lessons with spirit, I am not certain it matters.”
“Not yet, but that’s coming soon. Once we pass the next test…”
And when it did, he wondered whether he would run into Irina. He hadn’t seen who the spirit master was, but partly that was because of his inability to even reach the spirit tower. None of the first-year students was even granted the opportunity to visit, not until well into their first level and the next testing. They each had to pass or would be expelled from the Academy.
“If you’re asking if I intend to be an Inquisitor, I hope not.”
“Even if it means you can shape spirit?”
“What does spirit get you that you don’t get with other element bonds?”
“Well for one, you can ensure the Inquisitors can’t force you to do things.”
“You don’t need the spirit bond to do that.”
“You don’t?”
“There are ways of protecting your mind with other element bonds so that those who can control spirit can’t reach you. It’s more advanced than what we’ve been working on, but I suspect they will go into that when we are further along.”
“You’re saying if I can master fire—”
“If you can master fire, you can protect your mind. It only takes a single element, but it takes an ability to understand the bond, and that only comes when you can shape it better.”
It was even more reason to figure out what he needed to do to shape more effectively. “You know how it works?”
“If I knew how it worked, I’d tell you,” she laughed, pulling the book closed and stacking the others on the table in front of her. “Now I think I need to get some rest.”
Tolan stared at the books piled up near him before smiling. “I’m going to stay here a little bit longer.”
“You’d better be careful. If you’re here too much longer, Master Jensen will put you to work.”
He looked over at the two masters sitting up on the raised desk. “How long do they stay here?”
“There’s someone in the library all the time. They take shifts. They never know when one of the master shapers might need help finding something. Most of the librarians aren’t incredible shapers themselves, but they all have a passion for sorting through the items within the library.”
“That’s what you want to do.”
She shot him a look. “Is that so bad?”
“I’m not saying it’s bad. There wasn’t any judgment in it at all. I was just remarking on the fact that you seem the most content when you’re here. It’s almost as if you would prefer to live in these books and in the past.”
“I don’t want to live in the books, but I do appreciate what can be found here. We all have to start planning for our futures. Even you, Tolan Ethar. We won’t be in the Academy forever.”
They wouldn’t, but Tolan hadn’t given any thought to what he would do when he was done with his studies. He was more concerned about getting through each class without making a fool of himself and revealing how little he could shape.
Ferrah took his hand. “You will be able to do this. I know you will.”
He nodded at her and when she left, leaving him alone in the library, he looked around, staring at all the books. It was knowledge from thousands of master shapers accumulated over the years, and he could see the appeal, even if he had no interest in it himself. He would rather be doing than sitting and reading, even if he didn’t necessarily have much ability to do so far.
Hopefully, that would change. The more he worked with fire and the more competent he became, the more likely it was that he would one day be able to leave the Academy and… then what?
He didn’t really want to return to Ephra. With his parents gone, there wasn’t much there for him. Now he had shown some shaping ability, if he could reach fire, he wouldn’t have to worry about what he would do with himself. There were always jobs for shapers. Maybe he could take up a craft like Master Daniels. Not working in a wood shop, but something along those lines wouldn’t be all bad.
Then again, Tolan couldn’t imagine sitting in a shop day after day, working on project after project. When it had been his only option, he hadn’t allowed himself to think about how boring it would be, but now he was out of Ephra, and now he knew there was the possibility of more, he didn’t really want to return to that.
Tolan turned his attention back to the books, flipping open the page as he scanned the contents, looking for information about elementals. If only he could find something that would help him understand what he had seen. In all of the books he had looked through, there had been no sign of an elemental like the one he had seen in the forest outside of Ephra, or one like what he had released.
“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to assist you.”
Tolan blinked and looked up. Master Minden stood near the table, her hands clasped behind her back. As he often felt when she was near him, there came the strange tingling along his skin, almost a sense of tightness, and he couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was shaping. He no longer even questioned how such a thing was possible, but wondered why he always felt it around her.
“I’m just trying to better understand the elementals.”
“It seems to me you’re looking for something on a particular elemental.”
Tolan sighed. If you wanted to find out what kind of elemental he had seen, he needed to be open with the librarians. “I’m trying to figure out what type of elemental I saw attack outside my home.”
“Describe it to me.”
“The other masters weren’t able to—”
Master Minden frowned. The sense of her shaping intensified, almost an angry sense to it. “The other masters were not master librarians, now, were they?”
She waited, and Tolan could only shake his head. “It was a fire elemental.”
“Only fire? Or was there something more to it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Elementals often are mixed, much like a shaping can be mixed. You can use only fire, or you could mix fire with wind or earth or water. Admittedly, that last mixing would be incredibly rare, but presumably, such a thing is possible.”
“I’ve never heard elementals could be mixed.”
“Why do you think they spring free of the bonds? They fight it. They are not naturally a part of one bond or the other but are a part of both.”
Could that be it? “The elemental was a creature of flame, but it looked like a fox.”
“Are you certain?”
Tolan nodded. “Quite.”
She made her way from his table, heading toward a tall shelving, and slid the ladder along the shelving until she reached a particular section. She climbed. Tolan worried for her safety as she did so, but she was far more stable than he would have expected and reached the top of the ladder and leaned for a book along the shelf. She pulled it down and descended the ladder, making her way over to Tolan and setting the book in front of him.
“I imagine what you’re looking for will be in there,” she said.
Tolan looked at the book. It was an older volume and seemed to be far more so than most that Master Jensen had given him to look through. The cover was bound in a thick leather, and a symbol not unlike those found on the towers—or on the bondars—was worked into the surface of the book. He found himself tracing his finger along the symbol, and as he did, he felt a strange tingling sensation.
Tolan looked up, but he didn’t have the sense Master Minden was shaping him.
Why would he feel that from the book?
Tolan started to flip through the pages, and his breath caught. On each page, an elemental was depicted.
It was nothing like some of the other books on elementals that he’d been looking through. This one was written in a flowing sort of script, and the writing made it seem as if it was old—much older than any of the others that he’d looked through. With that, he also found the drawings to be far more detailed than in any of the others.
