Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) by D.K. Holmberg

as I know your feelings about Wyath. Are you telling me that you wouldn’t do whatever is needed to help him?”
    “You know that I will.”
    Eldridge huffed as if there hadn’t really been a need for discussion. “Good, because I’m going to need your help with this shaping.”
    They stopped in a small clearing that wasn’t nearly as large as the one holding the now-damaged draasin pen. When Eldridge took hold of Wyath’s legs, his mouth pressed into a tighter line. “Not much time for him,” he said softly.
    Wyath hadn’t said anything since she’d lifted him to carry him back to the barracks, and she’d noted how his skin had grown cooler with each passing moment. Even his breathing had changed, becoming more irregular. She’d seen something similar before, and she’d been just as helpless to do anything about it.
    “Come now,” Eldridge said. His wind shaping built with a steady competence, and he wrapped flows of wind around them, pulling at his cloak and slowly starting to lift into the air.
    Alena copied the shaping. She could use a more complicated shaping of each of the elements to travel, but she couldn’t carry another with her, not without risking both her and whomever she attempted to bring along. Weakened as she was, carrying herself might be more than she could manage. Eldridge could only shape wind, though, and so even were she to attempt to travel on her combined shaping, she would lose the scholar. But using wind, especially shaping it together, they would be able to travel on the air itself, guided by the strength of the wind.
    With her shaping to assist, they lifted into the air. Alena made a point of funneling the strength that she could shape into the wind, stabilizing the shaping with earth. Even that was nearly too much for her.
    Eldridge took control of the shaping and guided them as they raced to the north, away from the barracks. Wind whistled around her as they moved faster than she would ever have managed with wind shaping alone.
    Atenas first appeared as a dark shadow in the distance but quickly resolved into the massive tower of black stone that rose high over the city all around its base. Eldridge pulled them ever faster, pushing them along with his shaping. She expected him to lower them at the base of the tower, bringing them to the shaper circle infused with earth to provide strength, but he did not. Instead, he pulled them toward the upper aspect of the tower and held them in a controlled hover near one of the high-level windows.
    “Careful,” he warned.
    He touched the pane of glass, tapping gently and with a steady rhythm, sliding his fingers over it. There was no shaping used, at least none that Alena could tell, but the glass began to part, spreading away like the pulling of a curtain.
    “Go,” Eldridge said, strain now evident in his voice.
    Alena climbed through the opening, her training as a hunter over the past decade taking over so that she quickly glanced around. She was in a small, unlit room. A square of carpet covered the floor. A narrow table butted up against the window, and a lantern rested on top of it. There was nothing else.
    Eldridge started passing Wyath through the window, and she took him, realizing how cold he felt. The old warrior didn’t move as she pulled him into Atenas, and she didn’t see him breathing. Only the faint pulsing within his chest told her that he still lived, but even that grew weaker by the moment. She took a moment to perform another shaping of water but didn’t think it would be enough to keep him alive.
    Eldridge climbed into the room after her, forcing her back against the plain brown door leading out. “We must hurry,” he said, pushing her aside and performing a shaping so subtle that she couldn’t tell what he did. The door swung open, leading into a dark hall.
    “How did you do that back there?” she asked as they reached a stair.
    “A simple lock,” he said. Eldridge took the stairs two at a time, his shorter