Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (21 page)

W
hen Jasn
first felt the stirring of rock above him, he’d allowed himself hope. The shaping came slowly and with great strength. Maybe Bayan hadn’t abandoned him as he feared. Where was that damn woman? She should have at least tried something to get him free, but then, maybe she thought him dead. Many had been left for dead in Rens over the years—what was one more shaper, even one they called the Wrecker of Rens? Then the rock continued to move, peeling away from him and easing his shaping. He pushed outward, flexing with earth until it exploded away from him, freeing him from the weight that had nearly crushed him. With a shaping of earth and wind, he leapt from the cavern to find Alena.

She stood at the base of the cavern, glowing with a red-hot shaping of fire, one that Jasn doubted he could maintain. “What did you see when you were down here?”

“Honestly? I saw nothing but rock. I was trying my best to keep it from crushing me.” The irony wasn’t lost on him. All the time spent over the past year willing to die, and then he was crushed under the weight of Rens collapsing on him. Had he known that was the way to succeed, he might have tried it sooner. Now, though, he wanted answers, not death.

“I feel the egg but can’t find where it is.”

Jasn closed his eyes and reluctantly dropped to the ground within the cavern. It should be safer now that Hessan wasn’t trying to fall on his head, but he still didn’t like the memory of what had happened to him here. With Alena’s shaping, he could see. When he had been here alone, there had been only darkness. How long had he been there, waiting to find out what would happen, waiting to find out when his shaping would finally give out and the rock would crush him? Hours? Nearly a day?

The sun was at nearly the same angle as it had been before, making him wonder if it
had
been a day. How had he managed to maintain the shaping so long? Fatigue alone should have led to his failure.

But maybe he hadn’t maintained the shaping by himself. He hadn’t died, and from what he’d discovered of the water elementals, they had some interest in keeping him alive. One of these days, he’d learn to speak to them and finally ask why. For now, he should be grateful.

“There’s at least two,” Jasn said, brushing past Alena and sensing the heat rising from her body, fully aware of how powerful a shaper she was. “There might be another, but I’m not as skilled with fire as some.” The realization of what they were had come to him slowly while trapped, but he hadn’t been able to reach them. Not without help.

She smiled tightly and slid forward, moving into the dark shadows of the cavern. It was much larger than he’d assumed and extended far beneath the surface of what had been Hessan. No air moved, nothing that would signal there was an outside access.

Caverns such as this didn’t frighten him, not as they once did. As a child growing up in the Gholund Mountains, Lachen had often led them into the caves worked into the mountainside, telling him tales of monsters that lived within, frightening him. He remembered a time when they had come across such a monster, the way the golden eyes glowed deep within the cave, and he’d run out, terrified. Lachen had run after him, no less scared. The wolf that emerged was no monster, at least not of the sort that Jasn had come to imagine, but it was no less frightening.

There was something about this cavern that unsettled him, though not in a way he could put a finger on. There was power here, and the heat pressed on him, hotter even than above ground, where the sun baked the rest of Rens, but neither bothered him. As much as he trusted that Alena could speak to the draasin, he didn’t want to get between one and her eggs.

“We should leave,” he whispered.

“We’ve never found a nest,” Alena said. “We’ve found draasin of all sizes, but never a nest. We haven’t even confirmed that they hatch from eggs.”

Jasn sniffed. “I thought we’d found enough fragments to prove it.”

Alena stepped forward, waving her arms excitedly. “Not with any certainty. There haven’t even been any sightings. This would be the first.”

“I’m thinking about what happens when she returns,” Jasn said. He had noticed the heat when he’d been trapped, but now it seemed it was increasing.

Jasn saw the first draasin egg. It was nearly two feet tall and oblong, resting on the ground at an angle. It was scaled, much like the draasin, and pulled the heat from Alena’s hand toward it, as if feeding on her fire.

Jasn grabbed for her hand and pulled her back.

Alena glared at him.

“Don’t you sense it?” he asked.

“Sense what?”

Jasn positioned himself to get in front of the egg, blocking Alena from reaching for it. “Don’t you sense the way that it’s pulling on fire? What do you think will happen if you touch it?” Would it draw so much fire from her that she couldn’t tolerate it?

The ground trembled for a moment and he looked up, wondering if Alena was shaping earth, but she seemed as surprised as him. When it came again, rock and debris fell from overhead and crashed into the ground, sending up a spray of dust.

“I thought I was done with this place crashing down on me,” he muttered.

Alena leaned around him and reached toward the egg. Fire trickled from her, easing away. When the shaping touched the egg, the egg pulled on it, dragging it from her. Her shaping intensified, growing more and more as the egg pulled it away from her. Alena gasped and the color in her skin faded.

Jasn touched her hand; it had gone cold. She shook, trembling as the fire shaping was drawn from her. It was enormous, pulled with such strength that Jasn couldn’t imagine her surviving.

“Let go of the shaping!”

Alena looked up at him, her eyes wide and scared. “I. Can’t.”

Jasn turned from Alena to the draasin egg. If he did nothing, the egg would continue to pull fire from her, and he didn’t think she would be able to survive what was happening, especially not after what she’d gone through to save him.

Could he separate the egg from her shaping?

Not with fire. If he used fire, he risked the egg pulling on him the same as it did on her. Earth and water countered fire. Could he shape it strongly enough to help?

But how?

Jasn pulled on earth and water, twisting them together as he readied a shaping. How could he use it to help Alena?

Her lips had gone blue. She no longer trembled but was stiff and still. The draasin was pulling the remaining life from her.

Damn! He had to try
something
.

Earth was too risky, but water he could use, especially if he could reach for the elementals. Only, he still had no idea how to reach them consistently.

He took her hands and readied water alone. Jasn wasn’t sure water would be enough, not to counter the fire shaping that was being pulled by a creature that
was
pure fire. He needed help, but would he get it?

Please help
, he begged as he readied the shaping.

Water surged from him, flowing into Alena. Her body was cold, and the clinical part of his mind, the part that had been trained by the healer guild, couldn’t find anything particularly wrong with her. There was nothing but the effect of her shaping. He sensed her fatigue and the way the shaping pulled strength from her, but he couldn’t find anything else that might be wrong.

Yet he sensed her life leaching away. Every moment he waited, she grew weaker.

Jasn pulled on water and forced healing into her. There was no time for gentle healing; doing so only risked her failing. So he shoved water into Alena, using that to push life back into her.

For a moment, he thought it worked. Warmth returned, but it was fleeting.

Jasn swore to himself. If he could only speak to the damn elementals, he might be able to get her help. Wouldn’t water elementals be able to counter whatever the draasin egg was doing to her?

Only, he couldn’t seem to reach them, not as he had when he’d used their strength to heal Wyath, or even Ifrit. It was as if they didn’t listen or refused to answer.

“Alena can help, damn you!” he swore at the egg.

He pulled on the shaping, drawing more and more water, but he didn’t pull on it enough.

Alena fell.

Jasn held on to her hands, squeezing them tightly as she dropped, keeping her from hitting the ground.

Please.

He begged whatever elemental might listen, not knowing how to reach them, only that he
had
to. His strength faded; he didn’t have enough to keep pushing water into her, and if he didn’t have help, she would die. Jasn didn’t want to be the reason Alena died, not if he could help it. Too many had died around him, so many that he
hadn’t
been able to save in spite of his gifts.

What had he done before when using the shaping that had healed Wyath? Nothing that was different than any other time he had healed, or was it?

Damn the elementals anyway! If they weren’t willing to help when he needed, and if they were willing to let Alena die, then maybe he didn’t want to speak to them.

But he wasn’t willing to let her die.

There was another shaping, but it was risky. He’d focused on pushing water into Alena in the healing, but he could add earth. Doing that risked losing control, and earth wasn’t the same. Jasn had seen a way that it
could
work but had never attempted it.

If he did nothing, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

He mixed earth into water, using the draw of the life all around him. This had been the key, he suspected, and when he’d suggested the shaping before, he had been surrounded by others he could borrow from. Now there was only him. Hopefully doing this wouldn’t weaken him so much that he died.

Damn her for risking herself so foolishly.

He turned his shaping inward. Most claimed that shapings couldn’t be used on the shaper, but Jasn had seen that wasn’t the case. Water shaping worked for him, and he imagined that the others would as well. Now he had to test the earth shaping on himself.

Jasn layered it quickly, using water to stabilize what he did, drawing strength from himself and pulling it through the shaping and over to Alena. The work weakened him, but there wasn’t any other choice.

A connection between them formed. As it did, Jasn shared in what was happening to Alena. He sensed the pain, the agony she felt as the draasin egg sucked life from her. He gasped, feeling
his
own
life and warmth sucked from him by the draasin. How could something so small have such a profound effect on him?

He needed more time, but that required separating the connection. Jasn released water, but nothing changed. He tried letting go of earth, but the shaped connection between them remained.

Jasn realized his mistake. He had thought to help Alena, to heal her, but the connection he’d formed between them did nothing more than weaken them both. The draasin would pull from both of them, tearing out not only her life but his too.

J
asn staggered
, falling to the floor of the cavern next to Alena. She stared at him, eyes glassy, probably already dead. No, not dead yet. If she was dead, he would feel that through the connection. Much longer and
he
would be dead.

The magic dragged on him, the connection he’d formed to Alena pulling both ways so that her fire shaping latched onto him, dragging fire away from him. The pull was enormous, strong enough that Jasn couldn’t resist; there was nothing he could do to stop it.

After all this time, he would finally die. And it would be one of the draasin to kill him.

He let out a soft sigh and crawled forward. If he
was
going to die, he would like to see the draasin egg up close and know what it was that killed him.

He’d thought it a simple egg that shared the coloring of the draasin and the scales, but up close, he could see variations to it, a pattern that swirled along the outside of the shell. Jasn reached for the egg, his arm cold. His joints weren’t working right, as if the heat sucked from him prevented him from moving as he should. When his hand settled on the draasin egg, he found it warm and smoother than he would have expected.

Of course it would be warm. The draasin sucked heat and life from
him, from Alena, and for what? What did
his
fire do that helped the draasin?

Jasn leaned against the egg, resting his head on it for warmth. At least he would have that as he died.

But… he
wasn’t
dying. The weakness he’d felt and the cold torment of his joints began to lessen, and strength slowly eased back into him.

Jasn took a shaky breath and as he inhaled, he drew in more vitality.

“
Now
you help?” he said, as if the elementals could even answer.

He looked over at Alena but realized he didn’t need to. The connection between them told him she was coming around as well. Color returned to her cheeks and warmth returned to her body. Did the draasin lose warmth as they gained it, or did the water elementals somehow help with that as well?

Jasn stayed close to the egg, resting on it since he had no idea of what else he could do. It wasn’t as if his warmth helped the draasin, but he wasn’t sure that his body would respond to him as he wanted it to, either. Moments passed before he heard Alena take in a quick breath of air, and she slowly opened her eyes before sitting up and staring at him.

“What did you do?” The accusation in her voice was thick, and Jasn didn’t like the way she came across.

“What did I do? Nothing other than try to help you.”

She leaned to the side, resting her hand on the ground as she did, wobbling a little. Her gaze stopped on the draasin and she let out a pent-up breath. “You didn’t destroy it.”

Jasn laughed. “Destroy the egg? I knew what would happen to me if I considered it,” he said, “and to be honest, I didn’t even think of it.” Destroying the egg might have been easier. That way, he could have stopped whatever it was that drew on his and Alena’s ability to pull fire.

“How?” She scooted closer toward him.

Not to him, he decided, but to the egg.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

But he thought he did. The draw of fire was still there. He detected how the draasin egg still pulled the element, mostly from Alena. When he’d been near death, he had felt the way the draasin dragged all his shaping energy from him, but now the water elementals helped restore him, flooding him with water-infused strength. Jasn didn’t know if it would last, but maybe it would be enough for them to discover a way to slow the draasin.

Alena reached for the egg. This time, he didn’t stop her. What did it matter anyway? The draasin had done as much as it could to them, hadn’t it?

“The shell. It’s almost
soft
,” she said, her voice coming out in a whisper. She ran her hand along the glowing shell. “And it’s warm. Do you think it’s because it pulls fire from me?”

“Us,” Jasn corrected.

She looked at him askance.

“It’s drawing fire, and I think it’s drawing it off both of us.”

“How is it managing that?”

“My stupidity,” Jasn said. He should have known better than to forge the connection between the two of them, especially without knowing what it would do to him, but he’d thought… What? That he could overpower the fire shaping of a draasin?

And for all the help he’d wanted from water elementals, he hadn’t gotten any real assistance until
his
life had been in danger, not Alena’s. Why had they helped before when he’d been healing others? The elementals had aided him when he healed Thenas, and Wyath, and even Ifrit. Why not Alena?

More questions. Maybe he would never get the answers, would be left only with ongoing questions.

Alena lifted her hand off the draasin egg and watched him for a moment. Her deep blue eyes widened and she shook her head, slowly at first. “What did you do? Why can I sense the way fire is pulled from you? Why can I sense you more completely than I ever have before?”

Jasn sniffed. “I thought you were a skilled shaper. Can’t you tell what I did?”

“There’s nothing that would do this unless you used the water elementals. Is that what you did? Is that how I sense you now?”

“The damn water elementals didn’t answer when I tried reaching for them,” Jasn said. “So I used water and earth and worked the shaping on myself, thinking I could use
that
to help you. As it turns out, it didn’t work quite like that.”

“You shouldn’t be able to work a shaping on yourself,” she said.

“Why not? I’ve used water shapings on myself before—”

“Those were aided by the elementals.”

Jasn wasn’t completely convinced that they were. “So I tried this. And it tied us together, and then I wasn’t able to overcome what the draasin was doing to you. So like I said, my stupidity.”

Sitting next to her had given him time to recoup his strength, time enough that he felt he might be able to get up and leave the cavern. Maybe enough to shape his way out of Rens, but perhaps not much more than that.

“We can’t leave it here,” Alena said.

Jasn snorted. “You want to take a draasin egg out of here? Do you
want
the draasin to come after us?”

She shot him a sharp look that silenced him. “You do remember that I can speak to them? When the mother comes for the egg, then we’ll give it back. But I’m not so certain any draasin will be coming for these. Think of how they were trapped beneath the ground. There was no way the draasin would have reached them.”

Jasn looked around, wondering if that was completely true. There might be another way to access this cavern. Or there might have been, before the walls had caved in, leaving what had been the draasin nest damaged.

“Where are the others?” he asked. When Alena looked at him, eyes full of a question, Jasn explained, “There were three eggs here that I sensed while trapped. Where are the others?”

Alena stood, touching the top of the egg again, as if to reassure herself that it was safe and whole, before walking toward the fallen debris. “I can’t tell. They might have been damaged when the cavern started to fall.”

Jasn tried fire sensing, but the egg overwhelmed his ability to feel anything other than it. “I can’t tell either, but what if Mama returns for her eggs and one is missing and the others are damaged? Do you think you can explain that to her? I know you’re connected to them, but how deep does that connection run? Would the draasin understand if you explain an accident and that you had nothing to do with what happened to their eggs?”

The ground rumbled again and Jasn was thrown to the side. Alena leapt past him, going for the egg and lifting it with a shaping of earth and wind. The egg was nearly as tall as her torso, but she managed to hold it to her without falling.

“We need to get out of here,” Alena said. “Before the rest of the cavern falls down on us.”

Jasn glanced at the egg. They shouldn’t take it with them, but he doubted Alena would leave it behind. “Fine. What do you plan to do once we leave?”

The ground trembled again and she tipped her head toward the clear sky overhead. “Outside.”

Jasn grunted and lifted to the air with a shaping of wind and earth, coming to land on the lip overlooking the cavern. Alena floated up from the floor of the cavern after him, still clutching the draasin egg. In the bright sunlight, the purple and red scales appeared almost pure black.

“That was—” Alena didn’t get a chance to finish.

The ground rumbled beneath them, and then a piece of rock exploded into the air. Jasn shaped earth and pushed away, protecting them from flying debris before jumping in front of Alena to help her. Some pieces managed to get through, spraying across his face and tearing his skin. One punched into his shoulder and went clear through, almost like a spear.

Jasn bit back a scream but already began to feel his flesh mending. The connection to the water elementals was strong since they’d come across the draasin egg, and he healed even more quickly than usual.

For earth to fly with such force, it had to have been shaped, but where were the shapers? Who would attack?

Rens had no shapers, at least not like Ter. They had some ability to use the elements, but their ability was different from his and required time for it to build. Jasn had never learned how Rens shaping worked, and he knew that they weren’t completely helpless, but they also shouldn’t be able to hide from them.

He saw nothing to explain the shaping.

He turned back to Alena. “Where do you intend to go?”

“I don’t intend to go anywhere. I needed your help with one of the draasin. That was the reason that I came here in the first place.”

“What do you want to do with the egg?”

Wind swirled around them, and the earth surged again. There was no doubting that it was shaped now, but who?

“The barracks,” she said.

“Are you certain that’s wise? How many know about your abilities?”

“It’s not only my ability. There are others with similar skills. Eldridge. Wyath. Maybe even Cheneth—”

The rock exploded from the ground again, spraying toward them. They were being targeted by someone near enough to know where they were. Jasn pulled on wind. Earth might work, but he was weakened from what had happened with the draasin and wasn’t sure he would be strong enough to stop the rock by using earth alone. Wind could redirect it, though, and he sent the rocks showering into the cavern below.

“Fine. Then we need to go. I don’t know how long we can hold off this attack.” And he didn’t know if the attack would follow them. If it did, he might not be able to keep them safe. “Can you shape to travel?”

“I will have to,” she said.

Her shaping built with ferocious energy, lightning streaked from the cloudless sky, and she disappeared with the thunder.

Jasn waited, watching to see if the attack would follow her or if it would remain focused on him. Another blast built, stronger than the last. This time, Jasn recognized something in the shaping. Could this be Lachen’s attack? Had the damn man learned of the draasin eggs?

Without waiting for an answer, Jasn pulled a mixture of each of the elements together, binding them so that he could travel on lightning, and streaked after Alena.

As he landed in the shaper circle in the barracks, he was surprised to see Alena wasn’t there yet.
Had
the attack followed her? She should have managed to travel fast enough that it couldn’t reach her, but what if she wasn’t able to? What if carrying the draasin egg had slowed her or had leached enough strength that she couldn’t finish the shaping?

Unless she had stopped someplace else with the draasin egg. That made more sense than the other possibilities, though he wouldn’t have been all that surprised to learn that the attack had trailed after her. Throwing around that much earth might be a simple shaping, but it took strength. He wouldn’t have been able to do that much earth shaping after what he’d been through. Stars, it might be days before he’d be able to do much of anything.

No one else was near the shaper circle in the barracks. Water and earth sensing told him others were here, but not where they might be.

Another shaping built and he stepped away from the shaper circle, expecting Alena to return, but she was not here.

Calan landed in a flash of light and looked at Jasn with a dark smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Returning with Alena from a mission,” he said. He wouldn’t be the one to tell Calan what they had been doing, but he couldn’t hide from him the fact that they’d been gone. He might be covered in blood anyway, his clothing torn during the attack and in their efforts to keep the draasin egg from killing them.

“You look like you died,” Calan observed.

“I’ve looked worse.”

He laughed and clapped Jasn on the shoulder. “So I hear. Were you able to help Ifrit?”

Jasn glanced back at the barracks before answering. “Ifrit should be fine. I was able to heal her, though I haven’t had a chance to check on her again since I left with Alena.”

Calan nodded and started toward the center of the barracks. As he did, another shaping built, and Jasn looked to the shaper circle in time to see Alena arrive. She still clutched the draasin egg to her, and her eyes went wide when she saw Calan.

Calan stopped and turned toward her. A tight smile spread across his face. “Is that…” He stepped forward, ignoring Jasn, and touched the scaled surface of the egg. “Blast! It
is
! You’ve managed to find one of the draasin eggs?”

Alena backed away, silently staring at Calan, her eyes wide with unease.