Tristan felt quite awkward as he trailed behind Jenna. However, he still wanted to know about her force, “So, how are you feeling, after, uh….”
“After you nearly killed me?” Jenna raised an eyebrow as she looked back over her shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“Good,” Jenna did not elaborate beyond that, which Tristan supposed was fair.
Growing through his teenage years at the mine had not been rough. While he knew almost everybody by name, he did not truly know any of the security team aside from Siren and Kale. The rest had all been less interactive, viewing their assignment at the mine like a punishment. By the time they had moved past that mindset, the miners had learned to avoid them.
They were almost to the command tent when Jenna stopped, “Did you do that to get to tier four?”
Tristan paused for a moment. His mind had wandered to more important topics, “Yeah, it’s how I got through every tier. It's not like there are any appropriate metal artifacts for me to use.”
“It works for every tier?” Jenna asked. Her eyes wandered to the rest of the army, probably thinking the same thing Tristan had when he had devised his ‘safe’ method of breaking a kern.
“Yes, though everyone will feel the weight of a force before they heal. If they can’t stand it they will die,” Tristan said. It was more complex than that. Resisting a part of the fabric of reality had more to do with luck than mental fortitude. He was not convinced that it was random, just that he was ignorant of the variables that made it deadly.
“I was just strong enough to handle it then,” Jenna said.
Her tone made it sound like a statement, but Tristan still answered the question, “That is unlikely. That artifact stopped you from dying by freezing your metabolic processes, it gave you the time you needed to heal.”
That was not the correct thing to say. Jenna glared at Tristan and when he did not react, she turned to stomp off. Tristan had not managed to get the artifact back, but as the hospital had ultimately ended up with it he could not complain. There were enough people with light kerns there to make good use of it.
He expected Jenna to lead him to the commander’s tent, instead, she brought him to a blank dirt area behind it. There were around a dozen people there, and all of them were tier four. Siren and his people, Kerri, Cole, Merick, and Luke were waiting on them.
“Thank you, Jenna,” Siren began, “We have located the Lord of the Underworld.”
Tristan was already aware of that, but some of the elites had not. They seemed eager to take out their anger on the elemental that had killed so many people. Kerri looked terrified to be part of this group, looking out of place with his slight tremble.
Kerri cemented his difference by interrupting, “We can’t go fight him, not with a team this size. He killed a whole Caldera by himself.”
Siren did not rebuke Kerri, simply replying to the assertion, “While the Lord of the Underworld did indeed kill the Stone Caldera, it was through the use of a water and air-borne contaminant. Blacklake’s inspector believes it was mercury. While I do believe he could have destroyed a Caldera with force, so could this group, especially one with absent warriors.
Cole clenched his fists, “My family was there, we will kill this thing today.”
Kerri took a step back from the large man. Despite Cole‘s anger, Tristan was skeptical. Siren had yet to give an answer to the elementals that were already within the other fortress. The question was not could they kill the Lord of the Underworld. It was whether or not they could handle both him and his subordinate elemental lords.
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“That is the plan, keep your emotions under control. We have all lost someone,” Siren attempted to calm the bigger man down, “The reason why it is just us is that there are no elemental lords yet. It appears that only the brain and bodies were located there, if any standard elementals join with them, an elemental lord will be immediately be born.”
“What tier are they?” A Merrick asked.
“We can’t be sure, but they all appear to be relatively low. Our current guess is that the mine was the warrior half of the fortress and the lake was the civilian and crafting part of the fortress. Regardless, the lowest tier elemental is one, meaning the lowest tier elemental lord possible will be high tier three,” Siren looked over at Tristan, “Can you confirm that they are mostly low tier?”
“No, the Grand Ancestor was part of the repair crew, so they could be anywhere between tier one and five. Though it would be reasonable for the higher tiers to make it to safety, the face of the fortress took the brunt of the attack that destroyed it,” At the warriors' incredulous expressions, Tristan cut the flow of information.
“The Grand Ancestor was a general!” Kerri glared at Tristan. A good portion of the people present nodded their heads in agreement.
Tristan shrugged, “Well when you see what happened, you can tell me what happened. Until then, shut up.”
Siren shut down their bickering, “We have to hope there aren’t many of those high tier workers in the Lord of the Underworld’s army or just deal with it if they happen to be there. As to how we will deal with them.” Siren held up a wine bottle.
Merrick chuckled, “I know you’re a polite guy, but don’t you think that giving them a drink is going too far?”
“This isn’t a drink. It's a concentrated blood thinner mixed with a neurotoxin agent. We tested both of the poisons and found that they work well on elementals that have blood or nerves. It is an oil based compound, so it should sit on top of the water,” Siren jiggled the bottle for effect.
“Why not make it a powder that Luke could just blow at them?” Tristan asked. There were many reasons the oil film would be an uncertain proposition. It was a spring, that was perpetually flowing into a river, there was no reason for the Lord of the Underworld to rise straight through the film, and lastly, a large object rising would push the water ahead of itself keeping the elementals safe.
“Time,” Siren answered, “The flower that the nerve toxin was extracted from comes in an oil form. Commander Blacklake simply did not have the time to refine the material he had into a powder. That said, we will need to both spread and keep this over the elemental’s exit point.”
Tristan had half expected Siren to already have a plan. His lacking one said more about the uniqueness of the terrain than anything else. Luke was the only one who had fought an elemental lord in the water, and he had lost. At that time he had been at peak tier four, so the situation would be reversed now.
Only warriors with air or water kerns would be able to fight underwater. Tristan could hold his breath as long as anyone with a light kern because of his heart, but that still capped him at around fifteen minutes underwater. Luke could stay down there for hours and Merrick could do it indefinitely, as a water kern could somehow extract air from water. Tristan made a mental note to test that more, mostly so he could waterboard Kerri.
Once they decided that Dane, Kerri, Merrick, and Luke would be the only ones to go underwater, that solution was scrapped. Luke still wanted to go underwater, but neither Kerri nor Merrick had forces, making any fight with an elemental lord a risky endeavor. Tristan offered to use his gravity flame, but after testing it on a smaller scale, it was found to only compress the water in a small area in a sphere. It would push a divot into the top of the lake, but be relatively harmless to the elementals at the bottom of the lake.
Eventually, Blacklake came out of the command tent. He was on crutches and his foot was splinted, but he looked angry. Tristan almost offered to give the man an infusion of healing essence, but the commander had access to healers, this state was intentional.
Commander Blacklake stopped before the group before yelling, “This is why meatheads need commanders. You’re all stupid.”
Thirteen warriors looked at him in confusion. None of them were stupid, some were crazy, but not stupid.
Taking on a patronizing tone, Blacklake asked, “If you want to fight on a lake what do you need?”
Luke took the fall, “Water artifacts!”
Blacklake threw one of his crutches at Luke, “A BOAT! Forsaken gods, get a damn boat and a net. Now give me my crutch back.”
Luke hesitantly handed the crutch back as everyone else winced at how obvious that was. Tristan even knew whose boat he’d take. Frank could suffer for the greater good.