The shadow elemental, p.1
The Shadow Elemental, page 1
The Shadow Elemental
THE BINDING TRIALS BOOK 1
D.K. HOLMBERG
JASPER ALDEN
Copyright © 2023 by ASH Publishing
Cover art by Damonza.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Author’s Note
Series by Jasper Alden
Similar Series by D.K. Holmberg
Chapter 1
When the surge of fire bloomed in the distance, Lathan aimed the crossbow. Hitting one of the elementals from this distance, even a slightly larger one like the foxlike creature in front of him, was difficult at the best of times. It became harder when it suddenly burst into a fiery explosion of heat, as if it knew they were there.
“I bet you won’t even get close,” Jef said from where he lay on the ground next to him. “You can’t even raise that thing high enough without drawing its attention. How do you think you’re going to be able to hit it from here?”
His voice was little more than a whisper, but loud enough that Lathan worried the elemental might hear them. They were on the edge of a small grassy hillside, looking down on the creature. Better that than for it to look down on them. It wasn’t moving. Lathan wondered if the elemental knew they’d been following it.
“I don’t need to kill it. Just pierce it.”
He touched the flinty tip of the crossbow bolt. It wasn’t designed to kill the elemental—that wasn’t anything he wanted to do—but if he could get it close enough, he might snare some of the power from it. Stored elemental power could be useful. It was hard enough to get this close to them, which Jef knew but obviously didn’t care.
Lathan traced his finger along the trigger. His father had made the crossbow, using wood from a tree burned by an elemental that was much like the one in front of him now. It made the structure strong. The string was supposedly pulled from the whisker of another elemental—this one a large wolflike creature that his father had told him about but that Lathan had never seen.
The hyza started to turn. Then it looked toward him.
Lathan froze.
An elemental like this could attack from a distance. With the heat inside it, the elemental could not only send fire burning across the ground, likely catching them before they had a chance to draw out the cannister of infused water to counter, but it could scald the air—and their lungs—before they had a chance to react. Lathan had seen the remains of elemental hunters thinking they could trap one like this.
I’m not trying to trap. Just take a little of its power.
That was what he told himself.
Let him watch me.
He pulled the trigger.
Jef sucked in a sharp breath. “I can’t believe you’re trying to do this.”
The bolt flew straight toward the hyza.
Fire surged along the surface of its body. It looked something like a red fox, though instead of fur it was covered in flames that licked it from head to toe. It had a long, thick tail that swished at the air. The exploding heat made him think that it wouldn’t work.
But it will. I know it will.
The bolt flew straight… then hit the heat.
The wooden shaft wasn’t made of element-infused wood. It burned with a bright flash and another swish of the hyza’s tail. Its ears twitched, then it turned away, racing toward the rocky hills, where it disappeared.
Jef let out a long breath. “That was stupid. I can’t believe I let you drag me out here. As if you were going to catch anything from one of them. Your bolt barely even got to it.”
“It wasn’t about the bolt,” Lathan said, getting to his feet when he was convinced the elemental was gone. The air held some of the heat from the elemental, enough that he started to wonder how long the heat would linger. Lathan rarely managed to get close to an elemental like that.
There were some that were smaller—and less powerful. Those were easy enough to track, even if it wasn’t any easier to take a bit of their power. That was the harder part. He’d been working on getting better at snagging some of the elemental power and thought that this one would work, though elementals were hard enough to find, let alone catch.
Jef hurried after him, slowing at the top of the hill and looking around. “You didn’t want to hit it? How would you hold some of the elemental?”
Most people believed you had to hit the elemental in order to take some of their power. That was what Lathan had been taught. And he believed it. He’d been chasing elementals his whole life, storing some of that elemental power so that it could be used—or better yet, traded—at another time.
An elemental with as much power as this one seemed to have should have been easier to draw power from. They didn’t need to strike the elemental to get some of that energy from it. All he needed was to get close to the power.
Which was why he’d chosen the tip of his bolt the way that he had. That should let him call enough power from it. If he got close enough.
And if he could find it.
It was a test. Not that he’d tell Jef that he’d brought him along for a test. Jef would get mad, tell him that he used him again for an experiment that he wanted nothing to do with, and then go storming off the way he had the other few times.
Lathan reached the spot where the hyza had been standing. There was the residual heat in the air, but there was something else here. Lathan felt it as a tension that came through his boots, squeezing his legs. Power.
It was here.
“What are you looking for? Don’t tell me that you want to follow that thing up there.” He motioned toward the rock.
The stone was a deep black enough that Lathan wouldn’t be able to follow the hyza in that direction, though he wondered if he might be able to follow the heat he felt. That wasn’t the way that he wanted to go, though. What he needed was to find the stone.
“See if you can find any part of my crossbow bolt,” he said.
Jef gaped at him. He was tall and thin, and when he looked at Lathan like that, his mouth practically touched his chest. “You did see what happened to it when you shot it at that thing, right? I can’t be the only reasonable one here. Fiery Skies, I am the only reasonable one. You convinced me to follow you all the way out here. ‘I’m just going to trap a little fire, Jef. I’ve got it covered, Jef. Yes the stone will hold something as small as the little ara sprite. Of course the touch of udilm on the stone will make sure it’s safe’.”
“Are you done?” Lathan asked.
“With what? I think I do a pretty good impression of you. The key is how you start to speed up the more you talk. Your mother seems to think it’s nearly perfect.”
Lathan sniffed and turned back to trying to find the stone. He had dipped it in some of the infused water of udilm. That residual water elemental should have been enough to inactivate anything the hyza would have done, and should have been enough for him to capture some of the hyza. “My mother has been talking to you far more than she needs to be.”
“That’s just because she’s worried about what you might do. She knows when you go after other elementals you let the idea of a big score get into your head. It’s not healthy, Lathan.”
He ignored him, crouching down to try to figure out where the hyza would have come through. With the way the crossbow bolt had flown, it should have come through here, but he didn’t see any sign of it. Lately, the number of elementals had increased, and Lathan wasn’t sure why that would be. If his father were still around, maybe Lathan would have better answers, as he had always seemed to know more about the elementals than almost anyone else.
A shadow flittered across the ground, and he froze.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
Jef had knelt down and was crawling along the grass, running his fingers through the grasses as he looked for the stone. “Why? Because you found where that elemental came through here? Don’t tell me—it didn’t destroy your bolt. And you struck it in the side and managed to draw off enough fire to power up an entire—”
“Shadow. And it’s moving.”
Jef froze.
That was good. There were times when Jeff got it in his head that he didn’t need to listen. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of them.
Shadow that moved like that suggested an elemental. They were rare—and nearly impossible to snare. It was the one thing that his father had always chased, and the one thing that Lathan had never seen. Of all the possible elemental types, shadow was the one that Lathan was most intrigued by.
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“Just give me a moment,” Lathan said.
He had reached into his pouch, still staring at the space on the ground where he’d seen the shadow moving, looking for one of his other pieces of binding stone. He didn’t have many free pieces, and normally wouldn’t even attempt something like that, but shadows were rare.
And rare meant valuable.
“You can’t be serious. That’s not going to work.”
Lathan didn’t dare even look in Jef’s direction. With elementals, one learned to be careful while tracking them. They could be skittish. Lathan never hurt them—the binding stones he used didn’t do anything more than tap into the power the elemental possessed—but that didn’t mean they liked being shot at. Shadow was different.
He’d never managed to see shadow elementals, let alone even give some thought to the idea of targeting one. His father had always tracked shadow, though had never mentioned anything about attempting to capture it. Maybe his father had never truly wanted to capture it. Not like he had wanted to use other elementals. And this one might be nothing more than a fleeting cloud drifting across the sky, not an actual elemental, but if he didn’t try to capture it, he would never let it go.
“Just be ready.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Jef started to turn and head toward the rock.
When he did, the shadow slithered.
That was the only way that Lathan could describe it. It seemed to slip along the ground, like some serpentine creature clinging to the grass, slipping toward…
The black rock.
If it reached the black rock, it would blend in, and he’d never see it.
Lathan held the binding stone, then dove.
There was no guarantee this technique would even work. He didn’t know whether he would hit the elemental or the ground. And if he did get to the elemental, there was the very real possibility that it would attack.
Hold the binding stone against the elemental.
That was one of the first lessons of hunting elementals that his father had taught him. The stone would pull the power of the elemental through, and as it did, it could be stored. The stone was neutral, not bound to any element, which made it a perfect conduit for storing power. They were hard enough to find, but Lathan knew where to look.
The ground seemed to slide beneath him.
So much for doubting that this was an elemental. It moved—and Lathan was pulled along with it.
“Is it working?”
“Maybe you could help, and we can figure it out together,” he said, barely managing to get the comment out as the elemental pulled him toward the rock.
All thoughts of the hyza were gone. That power could have been a prize, but this…
This was a prize.
His hand went cold where he held it against the elemental. There was another surge of cold that washed through the stone. Lathan hoped that meant it was pulling on some of the shadow elemental, but there wasn’t any way for him to know with any certainty.
As he neared the rock, Lathan had a decision to make. Hold on and risk crashing into the rock—and with an elemental guiding him, it was possible that it would not only crash him into the rock, but might do so with real force. Elementals could be real shits at times. Or let go.
He pushed down, forcing the binding stone toward the shadow elemental for another moment, then rolled off.
The shadow slipped to the stone, where it disappeared.
He got to his feet, breath heaving out in anxious gasps.
Had that just happened?
There was a part of him that worried about how his father might’ve felt about him capturing a shadow elemental, even if only a portion of it.
The stone was cold. The temperature didn’t always mean much, especially as the power got stored inside and didn’t make much of a difference. In this case, though, he thought that it did matter.
“Did it work?” Jef asked. He hadn’t moved, and still stood near where they’d first spied the hyza.
Lathan held out the stone. The flat gray looked no different now than it had before. That might mean it hadn’t worked. When a binding stone was used on a fire elemental, it often took on a hint of color. The same with water. Wind didn’t do much, but then wind was fickle and difficult to catch.
“I hope so.”
Jef looked around before making his way over to him, eyeing the stone carefully. “That really was a shadow elemental. I saw the way it was pulling you.” His voice was hushed. Awed. “How did you even see it?”
“There was nothing more than a flicker of movement. That was it.”
And had he not been focused on looking for the other binding stone, he might not even have seen it. How often did shadow pass by and they weren’t aware?
Some claimed shadow was more common than most thought, though still rare like all elementals. It was a difficult claim to make—or to prove. They were so hard to spot. The conditions had to be just right. Then catching one was another matter altogether.
“Help me find the hyza stone.”
Jef tore his gaze away from the shadow binding stone, then started to grin. “You’re getting greedy. And I’m pretty sure that stone isn’t going to be found. I saw the way that hyza burned your stone. You’ll be lucky if you—”
Lathan bent over and plucked a gray stone off the ground. Unlike the round binding stone that he’d used on shadow, this one had been shaped to a point. There was nothing of the rest of the crossbow bolt to it, but there was no doubting that this was his stone.
“You were saying?”
Jef grabbed for it, and Lathan let him take it. The stone was warm, which told him that it had taken on some of the hyza power. At least he knew one of them worked.
“You actually hit it.” Jef looked up. “I didn’t think you did. Or if you did, I didn’t think the elemental would let you—”
“Let me?” Lathan snatched the stone from him and stuffed it into his leather satchel. “There’s no letting me. That’s my hunt. My stone.”
Jef looked toward the black rock. “Do you want to see if we can find more of the shadow?”
Lathan followed him, making his way to the edge of the rock and pausing as he looked out into the dark stone that climbed gradually upward. Blackstone was a strange place, one that most believed had once been filled with the power of the elementals, but time and the natural movement of elementals had changed it so that it was empty.
“Up there? The only thing we might be able to find would be hyza, but I’m not risking that search on Blackstone.”
“You’ve got the shadow—”
“Which we can bring back with us.”
He wasn’t accustomed to being the practical one of the two of them, but there was no way that he was climbing the mountain. Not with what might be there. Hyza would be able to slip along the rock and hide. If they were lucky, they’d have time to prepare for whatever the elemental might do to them. If they were unlucky, they’d be surprised. And burned.
Shadow was another story.
Lathan knew next to nothing about shadow. There were supposedly different kinds of shadow elementals, much like there were different kinds of other elementals, but no one had ever been able to see them well enough to differentiate them.
It was best to take the prize and get back.
“How much do you think it’s worth?” Jef asked.
“I’m not splitting it with you.”
“What? I was here, wasn’t I? That’s the code, you know. Share the profits.”
“And share the risk. Who was the one who jumped on top of the shadow?”
“Someone with not enough sense.”
“You know how I feel about this, Jef.”
“So you plan on selling it, and keeping me out of the cut?”
“Not this one,” Lathan said, his voice trailing off.
