The Shadow Elemental by D.K. Holmberg & Jasper Alden

Author:D.K. Holmberg & Jasper Alden [Holmberg, D.K. & Alden, Jasper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ASH Publishing
Published: 2023-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

The cold eased.

Lathan thought it was his imagination at first. He’d lost track of how long the cold had been holding him, squeezing around him. He had started to think that would be all he’d know, but when he came around, the cold wasn’t the same pressure that it had been before.

And the darkness around him had faded.

Not just faded. The darkness around him was gone. It had lifted.

Lathan blinked. He stood on a rocky ridgeline, stones slipping down from where he’d dropped. Had the wind lowered him, or had there been something else that had dropped him to the ground?

“What happened to you?”

Lathan turned, and the world spun around him, leaving him with streaks of darkness around the corners of his vision. It was a blur that passed, though seemed to linger longer than he had expected.

"Henash?"

A hand squeezed his arm. It felt warm and comforting, so much better than the cold that had started to press into his mind and so much better than how he’d felt with the wind threatening to toss him out and into the sky.

“I’m here. You got ripped upward and then floated there. I tried to do what I could to stop the wind, but that elemental power was more than I could control. I thought… well, I suppose it doesn’t matter what I thought, only that I started to think the Derithan had grabbed you and were going to drag you back to them.”

That was the same thought Lathan had. That the wind had released him—

Only the wind hadn’t released him, had it?

The change had come from the shadow appearing.

That was the reason that he’d gotten free, though now he wasn’t sure what had happened to free him from the shadow. Lathan looked upward, but as he stared at the sky, he didn’t see any sign of the darkness that he had seen before. It was gone.

Lathan knew that he hadn’t imagined that, though he didn’t know why there would have been something that would have washed over him the way that it had. The shadow had squeezed him—and had squeezed through him.

“I don’t even know what happened,” he said, turning his attention back to Henash. “I could feel… I suppose it doesn’t matter what I could feel, only that it was there, and it seemed to be all around me.”

“How did you get out?”

Lathan glanced upward again. “To be honest, I have no idea. The only thing that I know was the wind seemed to release me. I don’t know why, but I could feel that it was there, swirling around me, and then there was nothing.”

Henash regarded him a moment, then patted him on the shoulder again. “Come on. I think we should keep moving before the Derithan decide to try another attack. If they think that last one was possibly successful, I wouldn’t put it past them to try again.”

Henash started down a narrow path, picking his way along the rock in a way that reminded Lathan of how his father had done the same with the bulgar when he’d taught Lathan how to play with them.

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