Tristan inspected the two new elemental lords. Both had metal anima, giving them a sleek sheen, but it did not hide the bones and eyes. The one on the left had glowing bones and black eyes. A dark domain and a light kern, Tristan was not sure what the combination would result in. On the other side, a more imposing combination stood, it had nearly translucent eyes and brown bones. So an air domain and earth kern, it would have a huge amount of mass.
“Victory? I think you're speaking a little early,” Siren stepped in front of Luke as if he wanted to stop him from doing something crazy.
“Am I? That device we used in our last meeting was very dangerous, but unless you somehow managed to make another I think I am in a comfortable position,” The Lord of the Underworld made a show of inspecting everyone, “Ah, I killed your alchemist, you have no way to create another. Though you did bring me the metal child you managed to resurrect and my weapon too.”
“Nah, we don’t need that,” Luke said with a smile, from behind Siren.
They had noticed that the Lord of the Underworld struggled to take control of any metal filled with a force. It was a flaw that all elemental domains seemed to share. Blacklake had presumed that this was because they were incapable of possessing one in the first place. It was a flaw that was proven true as Tristan only felt the Lord of the Underworld’s influence on the copper patches, not in the tower steel surrounding them.
Siren stepped aside as Luke finished setting up his Rail Cannon. The Lord of the Underworld had a split second to move. Unfortunately, he seemed to already know what this attack was. The adamant bladed disc shot across the room in a streak of green lightning, ripping straight through its arm and tearing the appendage off. Three overlayed heroic level elementals could not stop that attack.
“That was unexpected. Kill them!” The Lord of the Underworld staggered back to his feet. With a glance at its arm, it decided it was not a problem and flew up and backward. Then it grabbed its two minions and dragged them out of the hole as well.
Tristan wondered how they were supposed to obey his kill order at a range. The one with the translucent eyes answered him. It pointed its index finger at the group and mouthed the word ‘die.’ Tristan had a moment to notice a beam of distorted air before Herod was cut in half. There was no heat, no blade, but that distortion cut like one all the same.
Freezing for a moment almost got Tristan killed as well. A second beam swept for him, connecting first with his gauntlet. The adamant was more than capable of resisting whatever this was, but it vibrated the metal at such a frequency that his hand almost went numb. Knowing that the Mythical beast leather would not be up to the task of stopping it, he kept his gauntlet in the beam’s path.
“Let me take the one on the left,” Tristan yelled.
Everyone was still reacting to Herod. Logical, he hadn’t stopped screaming and spraying blood everywhere. That did not mean a third death ray was not already inbound. Tristan made a paper thin tower shield of adamance and stepped in front of Siren. The beam was aimed at his neck and would have decapitated him.
That refocused the man, “Out of the ship, were fish in a barrel right now.”
“They’re flying,” Kerri yelled, “How will being outside help.”
“Let me handle that,” Tristan said, he had been collecting golden flames for long enough.
He caught another beam on his shield before sprinting to the hole at the head of the ship and leaping out. He did not want to set foot on the copper, for all he knew the Lord of the Underworld would make his landing spiky. Landing in the shallow water of the shore, he looked up at the three floating elementals, cloaked himself in armor, locked his joints, and let the gravity blast go.
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This was the longest he had ever gathered essence for the attack, and it was his most potent yet. The world flashed white coming back in grey scale over the timeframe of a few seconds before the color returned. Everyone was dragged to the ground, the locks on Tristan's joints tore and he would have dislocated something if he hadn’t been standing in a muddy lake bed.
As it was, the excessive force slammed him face first into the mud and forced him down almost a foot. The wave of debris and mud that followed told him that the fortress had displaced a good portion of the shoreline lake bed. Tristan tore himself out of the mud as fast as he could. It was tough, the full body suction was intense, but he was tier four and that was enough.
Tristan clambered to his feet, dripping mud. If mud elementals were a thing, he was what they would have looked like. While his tier was good for muscling his way out of mud, it did nothing for the material inside his helmet. He started frantically trying to wipe it away, realized that the helmet was obstructing the effort, and then he got hit by something really hard.
His metal sense picked up a tier six essence concentration hovering about six feet off the ground. The only thing Tristan could think was that the Lord of the Underworld had punted him. He bounced off the exterior of the fortress, it did not hurt, while disgusting, the mud in his armor did do a marvelous job of cushioning the impact.
He weighed the danger of removing his helmet against his lack of vision. Something hit the Lord of the Underworld, jerking him backward. The other two weren’t in his sensory range, but they should also be occupied. Swiftly he removed his helmet and splashed water on his face while scraping the mud off.
Blinking at his surroundings, he saw what had hit the Lord of the Underworld. Luke had slammed into it, gauntlet first. The claws on the artifact gauntlet carved four deep gouges into the elemental’s chest. Grant was down an arm, but he and Jenna had grabbed Tristan’s tower shield and jumped the elemental lord with the death ray. The third elemental was currently beating the daylights out of Cole. Siren was approaching the battle between Luke and the injured enemy leader.
Tristan frowned. Why was everyone with an earth kern so quick to recover from a gravity attack? The others were swiftly exiting the ship, which had sunk nearly a foot into the mud. Lake water poured in, filling it ankle deep with muddy water. The last two, Merrick and Kerri, turned and faced the interior as water elementals exited the structure.
Tristan ignored it. They would probably die to that number of elementals, but everyone here knew that there was a large chance that none of them were making it out alive. Eve’s face, happy at her father’s return flashed through his mind. Losing him would crush her. Glancing at where Merrick brandished an axe at the oncoming wave, the man would want a living Eve over a happy one. The Lord of the Underworld needed to die.
Rushing as fast as he could through mud, Tristan charged the Lord of the Underworld. It grabbed Luke by the wrist and tried to crush the gauntlet around his arm. The absorption force running through the armor worked overtime as it stopped Luke’s wrist from being crushed. Luke laughed at the surprise on the elemental lord’s face, then stabbed it with Hestia’s sickle. There was a whoosh of air followed by flames that blew the water away in a ring around the two of them.
It disengaged the two of them, allowing Siren to plant a spear blade right into the wound created by the gauntlet's claws. The Lord of the Underworld grabbed the shaft, trying to jerk Siren in, but the weapon turned incorporeal. He jerked it back, reapplied cohesion, and thrust again. The elemental decided that taking the spear a second time was better than receiving a second strike from Luke’s gauntlet.
Tristan was almost there when Cole came flying in and knocked Tristan over again. The man was constantly stumbling into him. Tristan shoved the civil protector away to find the metal, light, and dark elemental lord approaching. Black smoke surrounded it, reminding Tristan heavily of the first time he had ever killed an elemental.
That smoke would help Siren. Glancing at the ongoing struggle, he realized it would also help the Lord of the Underworld. Pulling himself out of the mud for the second time, Tristan summoned Vulcan and prepared for a fight. Two beams lanced out of the smoke with absolutely no warning.
Tristan could tell the point of origin was the elemental lord, but they were simply not visible until they left the cloud. Both hit him in the chest, he might have been seriously injured. However, while adamant armor conducted heat, the mud did not. Tristan made a mental note to look into the viability of water based armor later. It solved his weakness to temperature.
Hoping this lord only had the one trick, Tristan charged into the cloud of shadow. The elemental seemed to feel the same, it rushed to meet him. Both had light and dark themed skills and both trusted in their exceptional defenses to allow them to emerge the victor.