Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (22 page)

A
lena clutched the draasin egg
, feeling the heat pulsing from it. Holding on to the egg had required every ounce of her focus and delayed her arrival. Had she more strength, she might have traveled to someplace deeper in the forest, perhaps even to the other draasin pen, where she could use the stone to mask the egg’s presence, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to handle the shaping if she did that—traveling on such a shaping required focus, even more when she was less certain of the destination—so instead, she brought herself back to the barracks.

Calan watched her, took a step toward her. Alena wasn’t sure what the man intended, but she’d seen the way he attacked the draasin with furious rage in the past, and she wasn’t about to let him have the egg before she had the chance to study it and understand how it had nearly killed her.

“What do you intend to do with it?” Calan asked.

Volth stepped between her and Calan, and she felt his shaping building. That she did made her nearly drop the egg again. It wasn’t that he used a blunt shaping—if his time in the barracks had done anything, it was to turn him into a subtle shaper—but because of whatever he’d done to heal her.

“What does it matter?” Alena stepped away from the shaper circle. She couldn’t go anywhere now anyway, not without using strength she simply didn’t have, but she could use the strength of the barracks. There were others here who understood what they were trying to do, if only they were here.

Calan eyed the egg, his gaze lingering on it longingly before coming up to her face. “It matters. Where did you find it, at least?”

“Rens,” she said, and wished she hadn’t. If Calan went searching for eggs, his hunt would take on a different twist, a darkness that she had hoped to protect the draasin from. Calan was skilled and might be able to destroy fully grown draasin, but it was difficult even for him. Destroying draasin eggs would be something else entirely. He wouldn’t have to risk himself to do it, not as they did with the adults.

“Rens?” He turned toward the south as if he intended to jump on a shaping to find eggs of his own.

The only thing that protected the eggs was how difficult they had been to find. But knowing they were buried and what a draasin nest looked like gave them an advantage.

“Let me examine it,” Calan went on.

“Cheneth first,” Volth said. “And then he can decide—”

Calan rounded on Volth, building a powerful shaping. To Volth’s credit, he faced Calan without flinching. Most within the barracks feared and respected Calan, but then again, Alena didn’t think Volth was like the others. He had faced nightmares for months with the threat of death hanging over him, almost as if he
wanted
it, so what was a man like Calan when faced with that?

“You should return to your studies. You have barely passed the first trial.” Calan’s eyes narrowed and he leaned into Volth. “Do not think I will be as soft with you for the second.”

Volth smiled and placed his hands out in front of him and pressed. Earth and water surged through him, forcing Calan back. There was nothing subtle about that shaping.

“And you should be more careful,” Volth said. There was a hint of menace in his tone, enough for her to recognize that he would have been terrifying while in Rens. How had she thought otherwise? She knew what they’d called him; he probably had earned his nickname many times over while he was there. His tone shifted, and he lowered his hands. “Touching the egg is dangerous.”

Calan glanced at the draasin egg.

“The draasin somehow attempts to feed on the shaping,” Jasn went on.

Alena felt her stomach drop. Would Volth reveal to Calan what had happened? That she had been foolish, attempting to shape the egg after discovering that something was off when she did? She should have known better, but she had been drawn to shape fire toward it, almost as if the draasin within the egg called to her. Then again, that might have been what had happened. Could the draasin speak to her, even before fully formed?

There was still so much about the draasin that she didn’t know, and she felt at their mercy. They were powerful and nearly overwhelmed her mind, and if she didn’t learn some measure of control, she would be bound to suffer again.

“Feed on shaping? What kind of a fool are you?” Calan’s aggressive posture had shifted, as if Volth shaping him had calmed him somewhat. Alena had expected it to do the opposite, especially with what she knew of Calan. The man was nothing if not prideful.

Jasn only shrugged. “The kind who survived a year on the front. The kind who knows when to listen.” Jasn shrugged again. “So what kind of fool are you?” he asked, his voice dropping.

Alena watched Jasn as much as she watched Calan, seeing a different side to him. Calan wouldn’t take well to such goading.

Calan looked from Volth to the egg and finally to Alena. “Take it to Cheneth. You will tell him that I deserve the same opportunity to study the egg as others.”

With that, Calan turned away and marched back toward his dorm.

Alena sighed when he had disappeared. “Had he touched the egg…”

“I don’t think I could have saved him,” Jasn said, letting out a deep breath. As he did, his shoulders sagged slightly, and she saw him as the student that he’d been. Less powerful, somehow. A part of her wished for that other—the Wrecker of Rens—to return. “Didn’t help to piss him off like that, but I’m not sure I had any other choice.”

“No. You did not.”

Alena looked back and saw Cheneth emerging from the trees. His gray hair was wild and a sheen of sweat coated him as if he had run a long distance. He slipped his spectacles from a pocket and placed them on his face, and it seemed as if he shrank when he did that, as if a part of him faded.

Where had he come from? He could shape, though from what Alena had seen, he was like most of the scholars and weakly gifted, even if he had potential. But it was his mind that mattered, not his ability to shape.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“It no longer matters. Not with what you have brought us.”

Cheneth approached and held his hand above the draasin egg, careful not to touch it. He tilted his head and whispered something softly. “You managed to hold it,” he said softly.

Alena started to nod but caught herself. Cheneth hadn’t been surprised by the egg, she realized. “You’ve seen them before.”

Cheneth nodded once. “There have been others found, though never quite this lovely. Look at the way the scales catch the light. It will be a beautiful creature.”

“How can you tell?” Jasn asked.

Cheneth pointed toward the egg, still not touching it. “Do you see these lines?”

Alena leaned in and stared at the egg. She hadn’t noticed the lines before, but now that she did, she saw they split the draasin egg in half, as if a seam wound around the egg.

“These will be the wings. As far as we know, they form from the shell, you see. So this draasin will have this beautiful coloring.” Cheneth looked up from studying the egg and caught Alena’s eye. “How is it that you manage to hold it?”

Alena swallowed. There was no use lying to Cheneth, especially if he already knew about the draasin egg and how difficult it was to carry. “I nearly died, Cheneth,” she said softly.

Cheneth motioned for them to walk, leading them down one of the side streets through the barracks. Alena noted that it led to his dorm.

“That is what happened to the others who tried,” he said.

Alena almost stumbled. “You knew what could happen? Why not warn me?”

Cheneth took a deep breath and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Warn you? Alena, I never expected you to discover one. These are frighteningly difficult to find, and rare. We know so little about how often the draasin mate, but the number of draasin we’ve found tells us it’s not often.”

“Why should elementals have to mate?” Jasn asked.

Cheneth glanced over his shoulder and met Volth’s eyes. “What is that?”

Jasn nodded toward the egg. “If the draasin are elementals, and the elementals are beings of power derived from the elements, why should they have to mate? Shouldn’t they simply, I don’t know,
be
?”

Cheneth smiled as they stopped in front of his door. He used a complex series of shapings, pressing into them. It wasn’t until the door opened that Alena realized just how complicated the shapings were. She wondered why he needed such complicated protections in the first place.

She watched as Cheneth made his way into his dorm, settling into a chair in front of the hearth. There was so much she didn’t know about the man. Like most of the scholars, he shrouded himself in mystery.

Volth closed the door and with a wave of his hand from the chair, Cheneth sealed the door. Not only the door, but the entire room.

Blast. Even knowing him all this time, had she underestimated him?

“The question is a reasonable one,” Cheneth finally said. “And one those who know about the elementals have struggled with for years. When draasin are destroyed, what happens to fire? Does it weaken? And if the draasin can be destroyed, can the others?” Cheneth leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

Volth took a seat across from him, but Alena remained standing, still clutching the draasin egg. Until she knew it was safe, she didn’t want to set it down.

“That question can lead in other directions, as well,” Cheneth said. “If the draasin weren’t destroyed, would they continue to reproduce? Would fire become more powerful?”

Volth frowned, his brow furrowing as he considered the answer. Alena had noted that Volth had a quick mind, and she was not surprised that he followed Cheneth, but why hadn’t the same questions come to her?
She
was the one able to speak to the draasin.

“Fire has not become more or less powerful over the years,” Volth said. “I presume the elementals have always been there, but the draasin have not always been hunted. And the other elementals are not so… obvious. As you said, we don’t know if they can be destroyed.”

Cheneth smiled. “Where does that leave us?”

Jasn shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Maybe there’s only so much power to be had. If draasin are destroyed, then the connection to fire goes elsewhere. Maybe to fire shapers?”

“That is one way of thinking of it,” Cheneth said.

“You don’t think that’s what happens?” Alena asked.

Cheneth shook his head. “To those who know of the elementals, we don’t think that elemental power shifts to man, but that doesn’t mean it can’t shift to other elementals.”

“How many fire elementals are there?” Jasn asked.

“Ah, now you ask the right questions.”

Jasn grunted. “Unless this darkness Lachen mentions can take elemental power. That might be another reason for power to shift.”

Cheneth sat up in his chair and pulled his glasses off his face. As he did, he seemed to become something more. Alena didn’t have words to describe it, only that he was greater than the elderly scholar she knew.

“Tell me, Jasn Volth, what does the commander know of the darkness?”

“I don’t know. He said there is darkness coming and that we must be ready. That’s why he sent me here.”

Cheneth let out a sigh and pressed his hands together over his chest, letting his eyes go closed. “Commander,” he said, speaking mostly to himself, “what secrets have you learned in your short time in power?”

Alena waited for Cheneth to say something more, but he didn’t. He sat with his fingers steepled together for so long that she began to wonder if he’d fallen asleep. “Cheneth?” she asked.

He shook himself and pushed his glasses back on, receding once more as he did. “Yes. Now, about that egg,” he started, as if there had never been a darker conversation taking place. “How is it that you survived?”

Alena glanced down at the egg. The warmth radiating from it was reassuring in some ways, but the fact that she was touching the draasin’s wings made her slightly uncomfortable. What would happen if the hatchling began unfolding those wings? She wasn’t able to speak to it yet, and she knew that even young draasin could be dangerous, so she didn’t want to have to attack it or even subdue it with stone chains before it knew why.

“Jasn saved me,” she said. “Without him, I would have died.”

Cheneth looked over at Jasn, sitting with one leg crossed over the other. He watched them both with an unreadable expression, but she knew his mind was working through something. She could see it in the way his eyes darted from Cheneth and then back to her.

“Healing of some sort then?” Cheneth said. He pursed his lips together. “Tied to the elemental, I presume. You were able to use water elementals to heal her?”

Jasn shook his head. “I tried. It didn’t work.”

That was the first Alena had heard of that.

“Then what?”

Jasn met her eyes as if forced. “I used water mixed with earth to forge a connection between us. The water elemental healed me and helped me draw away some of the effect the draasin had on Alena.”

He had forced a connection to her. At the time, she hadn’t understood what it meant. Maybe still didn’t. Her mind was too foggy from the ordeal. She couldn’t even be mad. Had he not, she didn’t doubt she would have died. “Is that why I still feel so tired?”

Jasn seemed to hesitate before nodding. “I think the draasin continues to borrow fire shaping from you. I’m not sure why.”

“Neither am I,” she said.

“It seeks to hatch,” Cheneth answered. “Without fire, at least without enough fire, it cannot.”

“We need to find one of the draasin…” she started.

“Those that can help, hide.”

“Because they will be used,” Alena said. Cheneth frowned. “We saw it. Wyath and I. The draasin freed from the pen was drawn away from here, but not to safety. I followed it, and when we found it, there was a…” Alena paused, trying to think of the right word. “A shadow figure riding it.”