The Fire Within (Elemental Academy Book 1), page 22
Strangely, each of the elementals depicted was for fire.
“All of these are fire elementals?”
“Did you think there were fewer?”
Tolan shrugged. “I don’t know that I had given it much thought. How many fire elementals are there?”
“Enough to fill this volume,” she said. She tapped the surface with one of her long, crooked fingers. “If you can’t find the elemental you’re looking for here, it’s unlikely you will find it anywhere.”
Tolan waited for her to move away, but she stayed in front of him and he flipped through the pages, feeling as if he had no choice but to do so. By the time he neared the middle of the book, he had begun to think that perhaps he would find nothing useful in it.
And then he found it.
The drawing was identical to the elemental he’d seen in the forest—and the one he had generated by drawing a shaping through the furios.
“That’s it,” he said.
Master Minden took a seat across from him, easing into the chair. “That?” She looked up at him, her gaze weighing on him. “This is one of the oldest of the elementals.”
“What do you mean, it’s one of the oldest?”
“For a while, there were new elementals appearing, and some that weren’t easily categorized. This is one of the oldest. As I suspected, it is a combination of earth and fire. It’s unusual in that, especially as earth and fire should be opposites, but somehow, this elemental manages to possess strength in both.”
“What is it?”
“It was called hyza.” She tapped on the page, and Tolan saw the writing where it described this elemental. There was strength in fire and in earth.
“This says they were often found in forests?”
“So it says,” Master Minden said.
“How is it the elemental fire wouldn’t burn through the forest?”
“You think elemental is so poorly connected to the element they represent that they wouldn’t be able to control what burns?”
“But I saw what happened in the forest outside of Ephra.”
“Perhaps what you saw wasn’t what you think you saw.”
“I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.”
“Only that it’s entirely possible the elemental was triggered.”
Tolan looked down at the page, staring at the diagram depicting the hyza. “How would it have been triggered?”
“An elemental like this could be triggered in many different ways. Earth could be unsettled, sending it out. Perhaps something caused it to be kicked free from the fire bond. Perhaps it was never fully seated in the bond because of its connection to both elements.” She clasped her hands together on the table. Tolan had the distinct sense she was shaping. “What did it take for this elemental to be returned to the bond?”
“Master Daniels and Master Salman were there, but there was another, a water master.”
Master Minden waved her hand. “Water would do very little against an elemental of earth and fire.”
“How would you counter an elemental of earth and fire? If earth normally counters fire, how would you overcome something like this?”
“It’s not about overcoming, Shaper Ethar. It’s about understanding.”
She tapped the book and then stood.
She said nothing more as she left him looking at the book.
Tolan continued to read through it, amazed at the detail of the elementals. There were pictures of creatures that seemed impossible, ones little more than sparks of flame, tiny elementals he imagined would be impossible to detect. Then there were much larger elementals, including another that appeared a combination of earth and fire much larger than hyza. It looked something like an enormous wolf, but fiercer and prouder.
Would this have anything on the draasin?
Few people spoke about the draasin. The rise of the Draasin Lord made it so no one really wanted to speak about those ancient elementals, but there were remnants of them throughout Terndahl. Even within the Academy, Tolan had seen evidence of the draasin. They were found in the markings along the walls leading to the fire tower, pictures depicting the great creature.
He found a section of the book dedicated to the draasin. Rather than one or two pages as the other elementals had been given, the draasin occupied nearly a dozen. Each page had a picture of a draasin, and detailed the care and nurturing needed to maintain a connection to them.
Near the back of the book, he found a picture that shocked him. On it, he saw a person sitting atop one of the draasin. The detail in the picture was incredible, and there was a look of defiance in both the person sitting atop the draasin and the draasin itself.
Had the shaper somehow controlled the elementals so they could ride it?
The idea worried him. If the Draasin Lord got hold of a creature like that, how much damage could be done? How many people would be injured with the Draasin Lord roaming free with such a beast?
He closed the book and set it off to the side. If there was a book like that about fire, could there be one on earth?
He looked up to see Master Minden watching him.
Would she help him with this? It was likely to draw attention, and when it came to the elementals, this kind of attention could be dangerous, but he wanted to know.
He made his way over to the desk and stood in front of it, waiting as patiently as he could until she looked up and met his eyes. “What can I help you with, shaper?”
“I’m looking for whatever you might have to help me identify earth elementals.”
“If you think to chase down the elemental that attacked—”
Tolan shook his head. “That’s not my interest, Master Minden. There was something I saw during my Selection.”
She sat down her pen and eyed him for a moment. “What did you see during your Selection?”
“An elemental similar to the one that attacked.”
“Interesting.”
She looked up and scanned the library. Tolan hadn’t realized it before, but it was just the two of them in the library. Master Jensen had left, as had Master Stole. He had thought there were always two master librarians at any given time, but perhaps Master Minden, as the oldest of them, was given a slightly different freedom.
She climbed down from the desk and stopped at one of the shelves. This one was in a different section of the library than the one where she had grabbed the book on the fire elementals. She climbed up the ladder and paused about midway, reaching along the row of books until she found what she was looking for on the shelf. This was a much larger book, and she grunted as she lifted it free. She clutched it tight to her chest as she carried it over to him, and when he took it, he felt the weight within it.
“There aren’t many allowed to see this volume, Shaper Ethar.”
She climbed back up to the desk and took a seat without saying anything else.
Tolan returned to his table and sat. This book seemed to be bound in stone, and the pages inside were thick and the writing on them faded, making it difficult to make out the words. Much like the other one, there were drawings. Each drawing depicted an elemental, though the level of detail within this was even more intricate than he had seen in the fire elemental book.
The elementals depicted were interesting. Some looked very much like any other creature he might encounter in the forest, things like squirrels or insects, while others looked to be nothing more than rocks, though according to the drawing and the text along the side of it, the rock would have a very particular feature. Still others were not depicted at all. They were described—particularly the one that shared the same name as Jonas—and referenced as a great power living deep within the earth. Surprisingly, he saw a page devoted to hyza, the same way he had with the fire elemental book.
That was odd, but odder still was the fact that the information found in this book differed from what he had found in the fire elemental volme. Whereas the fire elemental book described the elemental as preferring forests, this one referenced a particular species of tree the elemental preferred.
Tolan sat back, staring at the book for a long moment. These books normalized the elementals. It was something he would never have expected to find, but there had been a time when the scholars who had depicted the elementals had not feared them. Instead, they practically seemed to embrace them.
He continued to flip through the pages. He could take weeks reading through this, trying to understand everything he could about elementals, and even then, he still wouldn’t know nearly what he should. Was this what he would be taught during his classes?
That was a part of what they were expected to learn at the Academy, but during their sessions so far, there hadn’t been any attempt at mastery of identifying elementals.
When he found the elemental that had attacked, he knew immediately it was the right one. Jinnar. The creature looked something like a man but was made of rock. Apparently, its true power, like that of all earth elementals, came from deep within the earth, and it could take on its form from anything connected to the earth. It preferred open areas and hard-packed landscape but could move easily anywhere.
Unlike hyza, this one was only over earth.
He sat reading everything he could about the elemental, but nothing in the text helped him identify it any better. There was nothing there to help him understand how and why it had attacked. At least with hyza, he thought he could understand. If the elemental was a part of multiple element bonds, it wouldn’t have to work as hard to separate.
Master Minden coughed and Tolan looked up. “Shaper Ethar, you have been here long enough. It is time for you to get something to eat and to resume your traditional studies.”
He looked down at the book on the elementals. The only time this knowledge would be beneficial would be when an elemental managed to escape, and those times were rare enough that it shouldn’t happen.
“Thank you for your help.”
“Did I help?”
“At least I know what elementals I’ve seen.”
“And does knowing what elemental you have seen help you in any way?”
“I’ve seen the destruction they cause, and I know well enough to fear that.”
Master Minden pressed her lips together in a frown. “If that’s the only lesson you took from this, then perhaps it was a mistake in showing you.”
“What else should I have seen?”
“That will be for you to decide,” she said. She returned to looking down at her work, and he thought she was done with him. He stood and collected the books he had scattered all across the table, pushing the book on the fire elemental and that on the earth elemental off to the side.
“You may return to continue your studies,” Master Minden said. “When you’re ready, I will gather what I can find on water and wind.”
“What of spirit?”
She paused her writing before looking up at him. “Spirit is different.”
“Isn’t there an elemental of spirit?”
“There are elementals for each of the element bonds, but as I said, spirit is different.”
Tolan looked back down at the two books she’d given him, his gaze lingering longingly for a moment. If only he were allowed to take them with him, but he didn’t trust himself with books like that—and doubted Master Minden would even let him. They were too old and too important to bring out of the library.
As he made his way toward the door, the distinct sense of a shaping built, pressing upon him. He resisted the urge to look back and see why Master Minden was shaping him. And he still didn’t know how she was able to shape in a library designed to cut off all shaping. Maybe it didn’t matter. She had helped him, and for that, he was thankful.
When he pushed open the door, he glanced back into the library. She continued her work, her focus on whatever tasks she had that required her to continue her documentation. Before he turned away, he could swear she looked up at him, but perhaps that was only his imagination.
14
The following few weeks passed by in something like a blur. Tolan spent a considerable amount of time in the library, and Master Minden had seemed to accept the fact he was intent on understanding the elementals. He was captivated by the different types. More than anything else, he found himself simply reading about them, trying to memorize where they were naturally found and which elements they had the greatest affinity for.
That was the most fascinating thing for him. Even within an element bond, not all of the elementals shared the same connectivity. Within fire, there were gradients of power. Some elementals were tied to smoke while others were tied to the embers in a fire; others still were tied to the glowing coals of a volcano. He marveled at the different types.
Fire shaping came easier to him the longer he worked at it. The bondar helped, but even without it, Tolan could now shape a little. He managed smoke at first, and it reminded him of the shiron elemental, one with an affinity for smoke.
“What are you doing?” Jonas asked one day during their fire-shaping class. They were supposed to be working on creating letters with their shaping, a way of testing their control. As Tolan couldn’t do it without the bondar, he held the bondar out. He focused on one of the smaller elementals, a spark elemental he had read about called ashla, using that to create flickers of light. It created something like stars, though small, and he bound them together in a cluster, careful not to put too much power into them. He had learned to hold back, afraid if he pushed too much into the bondar, he would release an elemental.
“I’m doing what Master Sartan asked of us.”
“Are you?” Jonas looked around the room. Others who didn’t struggle with shaping fire were having little difficulty. Some, like Draln, spelled out their names, using their shaping to ignite letters in front of them. There were some like Ferrah who had a tighter control, and she was writing something in a language Tolan didn’t understand. It looked like symbols, but not the same type of symbols used on the towers.
“Can you get back to actually shaping like we’re supposed to?” Jonas asked. “We don’t want to have him getting mad at us for playing around.”
“I’m not playing around,” Tolan said.
“You’re not shaping the way he wanted us to.”
“What was that, Shaper Golud?” Master Sartan asked.
Tolan looked up to see Master Sartan watching him. He was dressed in an orange jacket and pants. Streaks of crimson flowed through them, almost like flames flickering. He wondered whether Master Sartan had shaped it himself, or if he’d had it commissioned. The skill that would have been required to make clothing that detailed was impressive.
“Shaper Ethar and I were just working on our assignment,” Jonas said.
“I can see what Shaper Ethar is doing. It’s interesting. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a student attempt to sparkle during their shaping.”
Someone chuckled off to the side and Tolan refused to look over, knowing that it came from Draln or one of the people with him.
“I was just doing what I could through the bondar,” he said.
Master Sartan took a step close to him. “All this time at the Academy, and this is the best you can do with a bondar?”
The way Master Sartan looked at him almost made Tolan believe he knew about the furios. And if he did, what would he say? Jory had warned him that Sartan didn’t care for those who didn’t have the ability to shape fire. “I can do better, it’s just—”
“I should hope you could do better, Shaper Ethar. The time will come soon enough when you won’t have much choice.”
He continued down the line and Tolan looked over at Jonas. His friend only shook his head, as if to say that he’d told Tolan. Then again, that was exactly what Jonas had done. He had warned him against attempting something too exotic.
Jonas leaned over. “Stick to what’s been working,” he said.
Tolan let out a frustrated sigh. The problem was that what was working for him wasn’t necessarily safe to do. His success in using the bondar involved focusing on elementals, and while neither Jonas nor Ferrah believed he had actually released an elemental, Tolan still wasn’t quite certain. If he had released an elemental, he wasn’t about to do so again, and certainly not in a classroom surrounded by Draln and those with him.
Setting down the furios, he focused on shaping without it.
Jonas watched him and then shook his head. “Are you ready to shape without it?”
“I don’t know. I might be.”
Jonas smiled. “I’ll try, too.”
Together, they focused. Tolan held his hands out in front of him, his palms facing up, and—much like he had before—he focused on the ashla elemental, using that image to see whether he could connect to the fire bond. He didn’t know why using the image of the elementals seemed to help, but for whatever reason, it did.
Rather than holding back as he did when using the bondar, he pushed as much as he could through that image of the elemental, thinking about what he had read and how the elemental connected to flame in its own unique way.
Sparks flickered above his hands and Tolan pushed, trying to force them together. He needed the sparks to coalesce. He didn’t know whether they would, but he thought that was the key to doing what Master Sartan asked of them.
“Look,” Draln said, and Tolan glanced up to see him pointing. “Ethar is still sparkling.”
He shifted the focus of the elemental, no longer focusing on ashla. This time, he thought about saa, an elemental found within true flames. He was hesitant to use that image when holding the bondar, not wanting to draw too tightly upon that elemental, but without the bondar, he thought maybe he could use it.
Slowly, flames began to flicker. They hovered in front of him, and he focused on what he wanted the elemental to do and imagined letters forming.
Heat built as the letters formed.
“Tolan?” Jonas asked.
