Unbroken (First of the Blade Book 6) Read online

  UNBROKEN

  First of the Blade Book 6

  D.K. HOLMBERG

  Copyright © 2022 by D.K. Holmberg

  Cover by Damonza.com

  All rights reserved.

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  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

  Author’s Note

  Series by D.K. Holmberg

  Chapter One

  Lightning streaked down toward the ground.

  Imogen had come to recognize the different forms of lightning that came from the renral, given that most of the bolts of electricity that streaked from those massive dark winged creatures seemed to carry with them something that felt not only like power but also like a measure of communication. She found herself looking up toward the steel-gray sky, sweeping her gaze across it as she searched for Zealar, the largest of the renral that she spent time with. She found the enormous creature off in the distance, seeming to instigate the different bursts of energy that radiated outward.

  Strangely enough, Imogen felt connected to Zealar, though she knew that it shouldn’t be a strange thing at all. She was connected to that renral, as she had found a way to use the renral power, to bind to it in a manner that permitted her to gain something beyond what she had otherwise. And it was not just the power of the renral. It was something that connected her to a greater source of energy, much like the sacred patterns connected her to something more.

  Wind gusted past her, whipping at her cloak and her black hair, which had grown too long in the days since they had defeated the Sul’toral. Imogen simply had not taken the time to cut it. She breathed in to try to make sense of what was all around her. There was something here.

  She closed her eyes, to test whether she could detect more in doing so. She unsheathed her sword, the slender blade of the sacred sword master given to her by Master Liu himself, and now held on to it casually, though she did not need the weapon to summon all the power that she had access to. Not any longer. Still, there was something quite comforting in holding the blade, even if that blade was not necessary for what she needed to do.

  She focused on Lightning Strikes in the Storm and burst upward.

  The effect of the pattern, combined with whatever connection she shared with Zealar, was immediate, and it sent her streaking high into the air, where she shot above the circling renral. Imogen shifted from the pattern, but not entirely. She maintained some aspect of Lightning Strikes in the Storm and mixed with it an element of Petals on the Wind, and she used that to float, hovering as she looked down at the ground. The renral were circling for a reason, and Imogen needed to know what they had seen.

  The landscape here was different. She’d grown accustomed to the mountains where they’d been spending their time, in the place that the Leier knew as the Heart, though she knew they wouldn’t be able to linger there indefinitely. Eventually, her people—both the Leier and the Koral—would have to find another place. It was not safe for them to linger, and there simply were not the necessary supplies. More than that, though, was the fact that Imogen knew that she had not yet gathered all her people. There were others who still needed help, and though she had sent her people to gather as many as they could find, finding those others had proven to be slow and difficult work, unfortunately.

  A rolling grassland spread out beneath her. As she floated on Petals on the Wind, she could feel the wind carrying up toward her, mixed with a hint of floral fragrance. The power of the renral streaked from one creature to the next, as if they were a lightning storm themselves, and perhaps they were. At one point, the energy streaked across, and it carried to Imogen, striking her in the same sort of way.

  She did not fight the power, though Imogen was no longer certain if she could fight it. Lightning, when it came from the renral, was a part of the world, and a very different type of power from what she possessed through the sacred patterns. She crackled with that energy and held on to it for a moment before letting it draw her down.

  A dark shape chased her. Imogen didn’t need to look up to know that it was Zealar and that the renral had followed her, or perhaps led her. At this point, Imogen wasn’t sure which it was. As she came into a landing on the grassy ground, the renral did not land. Instead, he circled a dozen or so feet in the air above her, massive wings whipping at the wind, causing it to swirl around her even more. She looked out over the grassland, trying to make sense of why the renral were here.

  “What did you see?” Imogen asked.

  The renral never answered, though she didn’t really expect them to. Still, there was the sense that they carried a power with them that they wanted to share. In that moment, it seemed as if Zealar sent something in particular to her, as if the renral wanted her to be alerted to some different threat.

  She kept waiting for the renral to tell her that they would find others like them, but the Leier and the Koral had scattered. Her people had gathered as many as possible together, bringing them to the Heart, but increasingly, Imogen felt that those they had gathered were all that remained.

  The homeland had been destroyed. Villages, shattered. She kept searching, hoping that she would find some that had survived Aneadaz and the Sul’toral onslaught, but she never did. And she wondered how Timo could have been a part of it.

  Other than the fact that Timo had changed. He was no longer her brother. He could not be, not if he was willing to do that.

  And the Koral had suffered just as much. They had lost everything. In the days following Aneadaz’s defeat, Imogen had gone with the Koral shamans, searching for any of their people who remained, and yet had not found any. Villages had been destroyed, much like in the Leier homeland, and the few larger towns that existed had been abandoned.

  Imogen took a moment to shift her stance, sliding into Tree Stands in the Forest. It was a simple thing for her to do now. As she did, she began to feel the buildup of energy through her, and within that, she noticed a faint trembling against her.

  These days, Tree Stands in the Forest provided her with the ability to detect many things, most notably different powers that existed in the world around her. Imogen did not expect there to be much resistance, and she certainly didn’t expect there to be successful resistance to her power of Tree Stands in the Forest, as she had mastered that ability considerably.

  She found herself pressing imagined roots down into the ground and sending them sliding quickly deep beneath it, connecting her to this place. This was where the renral had guided her, and this had to be something significant, even if Imogen did not know ju
st what it was that Zealar wanted her to know.

  And then she felt it.

  The resistance was faint, but it was distinctly there. And… unpleasant.

  She uprooted herself, separating from the pattern, and using Stream through the Trees, she streaked forward until she reached what she had sensed. There was a distinct energy, and within that energy, she found herself pausing for just a moment, but she did not have an opportunity to pause long at all.

  The ground rippled.

  Imogen suspected that had she been holding Tree Stands in the Forest, she would have felt that rippling in a different way, before it rumbled and rolled toward her, but unfortunately, she had been focusing instead on what she had detected. It looked as if the stone and earth and grass heaved, lunging upward, and Imogen reacted.

  Zealar was there. The energy within the renral began to build, and Imogen called that power through her, through her still-unsheathed blade, and unleashed it. The stone and earth shattered under the bolt of electrical energy coming from the renral.

  Then it re-formed.

  Imogen planted herself for just a moment, using Tree Stands in the Forest, engaging with what was here. She was in no real danger—at least, she believed herself to be in no real danger—though there was the possibility that if she were to linger here for too long, whatever these strange creatures were would surround her and prevent her escape. Still, she found herself curious more than afraid. It was a simple matter for her to use Lightning Strikes in the Storm to shoot upward and out of their grasp.

  Something had drawn these creatures here.

  Timo?

  She didn’t think that it was Aneadaz, as he was gone. She’d seen him disappear and had seen that there was no real danger to him any longer. Timo was still a threat, but given how she had defeated all the other Sul’toral, Imogen believed that Timo would regroup and, unfortunately, would probably try to find a different way to gather the strength that he wanted.

  If nothing else, Imogen continued to believe that the greatest threat to her was Timo. In the time since she had defeated Aneadaz, there had been no sign of Timo, or anybody else that he might have been working with, though Imogen believed that he was still out there and posing a threat. She had come out here because of that possibility and because she feared what her brother might intend to do. That there was no sign of him, initially, seemed reassuring. Unfortunately, she was beginning to feel there was some danger to herself, and she would have to come to terms with it in a way that would remove the threat definitively.

  Imogen streaked forward again, using a burst of Lightning Strikes in the Storm, mixing in some of the renral energy, and the earth exploded. She blasted through it, sweeping her blade around, and saw that the creature would re-form, even before she witnessed it happening in real time. She could anticipate it.

  She shot upward on Lightning Strikes in the Storm and landed atop Zealar, who shrieked. His strange renral voice carried out into the air around them, a shriek of power that exploded throughout the landscape, giving voice to his anger and rage.

  Imogen patted Zealar. “I feel much the same way,” she said, “but there isn’t much that we can do here until we have a better sense of what’s going on and why you were drawn here.” She leaned forward, looking down and trying to make sense of just what was here. “I’m assuming that you and the others were drawn here, even if we don’t know why. I sure wish that you had some way of speaking to tell me what drew you out here, as without that, I’m not sure that I’m going to know just what I’m supposed to do, and whether there is anything worthwhile to fight through these creatures for.”

  Then again, Imogen didn’t like the idea of leaving creatures behind that might cause problems later on. If they were dangerous enough that she had struggled to destroy them initially, then they were dangerous enough that she needed to remove them so that others did not face the same danger, in case they came wandering past here. She doubted there would be many Leier who would come wandering through here, but she simply did not know, as she did not know how many of her people would take that time, especially given that there was very little out here for anybody to find.

  The renral continued circling, and Imogen could feel power within the creature. More than that, she began to feel the way that Zealar was connecting to the other renral—the bursts of lightning that traveled from one to the next, the energy surging between them. It seemed to connect them in a way that rose and built, and yet there was something within it that she could feel swelling around her, a buildup of power that came from the renral.

  And then Zealar unleashed it on the creatures.

  It exploded.

  The creature nearest them shattered into a pile of dirt, grass, and some stone, but not nearly as much as Imogen would have expected. Given what had emerged from the ground, she would have thought that there would be more stone to it, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Most of it seemed to be dirt and grass.

  And the lightning energy coming from the renral was not enough to overwhelm that. She focused on what she could feel, on what Zealar or any other renral was passing through to her, and began to feel power building in a way that she thought she might be able to utilize.

  Imogen added to it.

  Not Lightning Strikes in the Storm. There was no reason to add that, given what the renral were doing, as anything that Imogen might do would only be secondary to the power that the renral possessed. What Imogen had to find was some other aspect of her ability. And given that she had her sacred patterns, and she was a master of them, Imogen had a thought about how she might be able to do it.

  Dirt. Grass. Stone.

  “I need to get back down there,” she said, patting Zealar on the side. “Keep these creatures contained. Don’t let them go anywhere.”

  She wasn’t sure if Zealar would understand, but as she patted the massive renral, she felt a singeing of power that worked through her, and then it faded. She took that as Zealar’s agreement, and so she jumped, landed on the ground, and immediately shifted to Tree Stands in the Forest.

  She waited.

  The creatures surrounded her quickly, seemingly recognizing her as a threat. Rather than trying to fight, using one of the other sacred patterns in order to attack the creatures, she let them circle toward her, and she didn’t move. She stayed frozen in that sacred pattern, the energy and power building up around her, while pushing downward with her root system. As the renral circled, sending streaks of lightning shooting down to the ground, they forced the creatures inward.

  As they approached, Imogen began to feel something odd coming off them, a strange energy that seemed almost…

  Dark.

  These were dark creatures.

  Imogen didn’t have much experience with dark creatures. She had certainly confronted dark sorcerers, along with sorcerers who wanted to use power in dark fashions, but she had rarely faced off against dark creatures themselves. They were often corrupted—natural creatures born of magic and power, but altered through a dark combination of tormented magic—and were meant to destroy. There were stories about how dark creatures were created using the power of pain and death, often with sorcerers pulling power from those who magic as they stole it with pain and pushed it into another. Maybe that was why she could not overwhelm this creature. These creatures, she reminded herself. There was more than one.

  She had been trying destructive energy against these creatures, and that had not worked. She had seen that immediately. The first time that she had sent her own Lightning Strikes in the Storm into the creatures, she had discovered something she had not known creatures had the power to do. They had re-formed.

  She forced her Tree Stands in the Forest farther down into the ground. And the creatures surged toward her.

  Imogen did something that she had rarely tried before. She sent her roots out toward the renral circle around her, and then up, looping them in invisible bands of power that she could see in her mind but that did not form any visible energy
in the air, and then she captured the creatures within the root system. With that done, she continued to entangle them in more and more roots and gradually began to draw them down.

  Grass. Dirt. Stone. All things the Tree could feed upon, only she had to hold them. And more than that, she needed to find something that wasn’t destructive. That hadn’t worked against these creatures. She needed to find something that would be constructive, a way of building power, and a way of overwhelming what they were attempting.

  That energy continued to rise. It struggled against her, but Imogen was the First of her kind, no longer the First of the Blade, and more than the General of the Leier. She was a sacred sword master, and she had Porapeth gifts.

  And so she pushed that energy up.

  Then pulled it down.

  The ground fought against her with a resistance that she did not usually experience while using Tree Stands in the Forest. She had to strain more than she usually did. It became almost painful.

  And within that painfulness, Imogen began to recognize some other aspect of power that she could not fight the way that she had attempted to before. But she didn’t have to fight it. She had only to draw it down and hold on to it.

  The Tree Stands in the Forest held. Imogen held. And gradually she felt the earth, the grass, the stone, all beginning to settle.

  When it did, she felt some influence here. It was strange. A series of images flashed in her mind, and she didn’t know if they came from Benji, but the images showed her what she needed to do to overpower what she experienced. She pushed even harder, straining against the power as much as she could. A darkness was there.