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

wouldn’t meet her eyes.
    Blasted man. What was happening here?
    “The others do as well,” Calan went on. “They’re easier to contain. Wyath claims the pens don’t need reinforcement, and he might be right about the ones in the barracks, but I can feel the way the stone shakes.”
    There was something about the way he said it that gave her pause. Could Calan hear the elementals as well? Might he be an ally they hadn’t realized they had?
    He shaped earth, pulling it together with an angry force, slamming it into the stone of the pen, the shaping a punishment to the draasin. It roared, and Alena felt its pain within her mind.
    No, he couldn’t be an ally. Had he the ability to speak to the elementals, he wouldn’t harm the draasin so blindly.
    “Let me help with the shaping,” Alena suggested.
    Calan looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Ifrit and I can manage. Wyath thought he would observe, but I think the old man will only get himself hurt again.”
    Wyath ignored the jab as Calan turned back to the shaping, joining his with Ifrit’s. Together, great power with earth and water built, pressing toward the pen, pushing slowly and steadily forward. Alena listened with earth sensing, straining to see what they might be doing with their shaping. At first, it seemed they attempted to confine the draasin, shrink the space within the pen. That would be bad enough for the massive creature inside. Then she realized what they were really doing.
    They intended to crush the draasin.
    Through her connection, she could feel the rising concern from Sashi. There was the wild agitation, but mixed with it was a new fear and anger directed at her.
    You must stop this.
    The words screamed in her mind in spite of every attempt she made to keep the draasin pushed to the back of her consciousness. She could no more ignore the way it thundered in her mind than she could ignore the power of the oceans of her homeland.
    She looked to Bayan, but the woman simply stared at Calan and Ifrit, her eyes wide. Given her sensitivity to shaping, she knew what they attempted, likely had known as soon as they arrived at the pen.
    Wyath still wouldn’t meet her eyes.
    Damn him. Somehow she would have to do this on her own.
    But how? She might be able to mask her shaping, but could she really manage to do it against shapers as skilled as Calan and Ifrit? Did she dare try?
    Lren! You must help!
    The name the draasin used for her thundered in her mind.
    She had to try, but doing so might expose her and ruin everything she hoped to accomplish.
    If she did nothing, Sashi would be crushed.
    “If you don’t need me, then I have more training for my student.” She motioned to Bayan to follow.
    Bayan glanced at the pen and then at Alena. Alena ignored her and strode away from the pen. What she needed to try couldn’t be done so close to Calan, if it would work at all.
    Once back in the ring of trees, she stopped. “Shield me,” she instructed Bayan. Alena would need all her focus and all her strength if she were to do this.
    “For what?”
    “Just do it,” she snapped. It would have been better had she managed to get Wyath to follow her away from the pen. At least he knew Cheneth’s plan and there wouldn’t be the same questions as there would be with Bayan, but there was no helping that now.
    “What do you want shielded?”
    Could she do this in such a way that Bayan still didn’t know? Doubtful, but she could minimize the questions. “I want you to demonstrate how you would shield another shaper. This is critical when working with another. One can provide the shielding while the other does the shaping. See if you can manage.”
    “How will we know if it works?”
    Alena suppressed the frustration she felt. “You’ll know.”
    Bayan’s shaping built with quick precision. There was no doubt that she was a skilled shaper, but there was none of the elegance to the shielding that someone with more experience would be able to achieve.