Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

Hopefully that wouldn’t make it any less effective.
    Once the shielding was in place, Alena began working with earth. She allowed herself to feel the angry pain Sashi felt, the way it called to her, demanding that Lren help. The other draasin called to her as well, but theirs were weaker demands. The larger—and older—creatures were somehow better able to reach out to her, but all the draasin she’d encountered had some capacity to speak to her.
    Lren! I cannot hold much longer…
    I’m trying, she sent, shaping through the earth as she did. Shaping this way, forced to mask it as she did, was more difficult, a more complex working. Using earth was a matter of reaching through the connection she sensed all around her, to the trees, the soil, and the rock deep below. It connected her to life. Masking the shaping required her to pull on earth in a way that went against the training she’d received in Atenas, forced her to twist the shaping, but doing so weakened it as well. Would she even be strong enough to stop not only Calan but also Ifrit?
    She felt what they were doing, the way they pushed earth and stone into the pen, filling it as they pressed against the draasin. They had refused another way of soothing Sashi, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with how Calan had been injured during the last attack or how his student had been harmed by this particular draasin.
    Rather than pushing on earth, she tried to pull against their shaping, working to slow what they did. Bayan’s shaping slipped, and Alena knew she’d detected what Alena had done.
    “Hold it!” she snapped.
    There was nothing to do but continue. She would have to come up with an explanation for Bayan at some point when this was done, if she managed to stop what Ifrit and Calan did.
    Their shaping reached Sashi. The elemental roared. She heard it and felt it. It came with a cry for help, fear and anger mingling within her mind. The draasin had allowed themselves to come to the barracks under the assumption that Alena would keep them safe.
    She couldn’t stop Calan or Ifrit, not with a masked shaping. And she wasn’t about to reveal herself to them. Even more would be risked then.
    Maybe she didn’t have to. Could she loosen the chains around the draasin? If she allowed it to escape, it might have a chance.
    Alena turned her attention and began unraveling the dense shaping that had crafted the chains in the first place. Their making had required skilled earth shapers to add strength and flexibility to the stone but also trap the power of the shaping within, using the binding symbols Cheneth had demonstrated. None in Atenas knew how to create such symbols, and she hadn’t seen then before coming to the barracks. Freeing the chains, weakening the earth trapped within them, was almost as difficult as pulling on earth.
    “Try shaping the mark,” Bayan suggested.
    Alena glanced at her and saw the way Bayan studied her, the curious expression she wore. There would be questions, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to answer them. She might need to involve Eldridge, if he would ever return, or even Cheneth, though she didn’t want to think of his anger at learning she had been the one to reveal the secrets.
    The idea had merit, though. Alena focused on the mark, sensing them even from a distance. She pressed fire and wind through them, countering water and earth that had made the chain.
    Sashi roared again, this time almost completely in her mind.
    Alena dropped to the ground and focused on pushing through the symbol. She wasn’t strong enough.
    Fire suddenly filled her and she poured it into the mark. Somehow, she felt it as the symbol split, losing whatever stored energy it had.
    The draasin roared, and fire raged against earth.
    Calan and Ifrit’s shaping pushed, but Alena took the opportunity to add her shaping to Sashi’s and pushed against them. Fire exploded in a plume visible through the trees. Someone screamed, and