Tristan came back to the land of the living to a shouting match. He was not sure how long he had been out, but he was on the surface, though still lying in the mud. It had been at least a few minutes since his armor had completely dissipated. The headache was unappreciated but it took the edge off his other injuries.

“You can’t be serious!” Luke yelled, “You only lived long enough because we took the brunt of the attack.”

“I still finished him off,” Kerri said, a smirk in his voice.

“With Tristan’s dagger,” Luke countered.

“Well, I can admit that he helped, you did nothing,” Kerri taunted. Tristan wondered if Kerri understood just how unstable Luke could be.

“I dropped the capsule in the lake months ago, we only won because of me,” Luke responded.

Tristan cracked his eyes open and almost shut them again. His head was not keen on the intense noonday sunlight. Still, he found the arguing duo. Luke looked terrible but was currently being seen to by a tier three healer. One of the few left in the Caldera. The four parallel cuts across his face had stopped bleeding. Two went above his eye and two below it, the top ones were straightforward. The healer used some type of glue to hold it together.

Below his eye, the cuts had intersected and broken his nose. Those two would scar worse, as the healer prioritized setting Luke’s nose over the aesthetic value of his face. There were bruises all over his arms and legs along with burns all down his right arm where the gauntlet had melted. Tristan was surprised that Luke had been injured so little, at least until he pulled out a bottle and started chugging his protein shake.

“Promise me that it was on purpose,” Kerri paused, and right as Luke opened his mouth, he continued, “And I will call you a liar. Liar Luke has a good rhythm to it.”

Luke frowned, Tristan wondered if Kerri was about to get drop kicked back into the lake, but, “It kind of does. Coward Kerri, could be what we call you.”

Kerri’s smirk froze, “You do not have the right to insult me.”

Luke raised an eyebrow, “Did I ‘the liar’ speak too much truth?”

Kerri trembled, clenching his fists. He did not escalate to blows, which was a good thing for Kerri’s health. The young aristocrat had gotten a few cuts and bruises, but aside from that he was relatively unharmed. He stomped off after muttering an insult.

Tristan managed to push himself to a sitting position, getting both the healer's and Luke’s attention. The simple action was much harder than he had anticipated. His core muscles were not dysfunctional, however they had been right under where his armor had cracked. Looking down he could see that his shirt had been cut off several lines of stitches ran down his torso. He had not realized how much damage had been done. Bandages covered his joints where the copper shrapnel had managed to get through, though the damage seemed to be less severe.

“You look horrible,” Luke said, “Want a protein shake.”

“No, I don’t feel that terrible yet,” Tristan shook his head.

It was true, he did not, even now the injuries were healing and would be gone within the week. The production of growth force from his heart was not connected to his kern. Meaning it always pumped out a consistent amount of the force, even while his kern was repairing itself. That was good for the current tier, but it meant that it was not growing with him. Fortunately, he wouldn’t magically get more cells that it would need to affect, regardless of how strong he got.

Several other medical people fussed around other warriors. Five blankets covered bodies. So six had died unless they had somehow recovered the body of the warrior who had died outside the fortress. Tristan grimaced, Dane was probably one of them.

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He still wanted to know for sure, “Who survived.”

Luke glanced over at the bodies to the displeasure of the healer, “Siren, Jenna, Merrick, and us.”

So out of the elite that Siren brought, only Jenna survived. Kale was gone, Tristan had been rude to the man on their last real interaction. He was kind of like a grandparent that Tristan never had. Grant and Dane had never been close. They were barely on a first name basis before this week. Herod was unknown to Tristan, aside from his loyalty to Eve and the River Caldera elders. Cole should have lived, Tristan frowned, there was nothing up here that could have stopped Siren, Grant, Jenna, Kale, and Cole even if they were injured.

“What happened to Cole?” Tristan asked.

“Who?” Luke asked, then he realized who he was asking about, “Oh, the giant. I don’t know, but he’s definitely dead.”

Tristan laboriously managed to regain his feet. They had won, he should be happy about that, right? This wasn’t even the closest he had ever come to death, not the worst he had ever been hurt. Still, he couldn’t stop the tremors from going through his hands.

“Please don’t do anything too strenuous,” The healer said as he finished up with Luke, “Don’t lift anything over fifty pounds,” He held up a hand to forestall what he thought Tristan was going to say, “I know you think you’re strong and that we say the same thing to the tier zeroes. It does not matter how strong a cut muscle is, so no more than fifty pounds if you want to heal.”

Tristan had not been intending to argue the point. He would not be disabled for as long as the healer probably assumed, but Tristan would rather heal correctly. Nodding and thanking the healer, Tristan made his way over to Siren.

Merrick was helping Siren stand. His arm was in a sling and had a crutch under the other. One leg was in a cast and bandages covered most of his body. Merrick was in a similar start to Kerri, with some bruises, and some cuts, but the entire ordeal had been easier on him than the others. Tristan felt one concern lift, he would not have to tell Eve about her father’s death.

Merrick nodded at Tristan and Luke, “Glad to see that you two are well.”

Tristan nodded his thanks, but directed his question to Siren, “What happened? Was that last elemental lord truly so deadly?”

Siren let out a pained sigh, “Yes and no. It was not able to shoot off too many of those cutting beams, I believe that it is quite essence intensive. Kale had already been killed by the time you went underwater but something you did caused chaos with the battle at the trenches. Custodian took the long way around and attacked us from behind. Cole died that way.” Tristan winced, having an additional elemental lord join in was the worst case scenario, “A few minutes later, we were losing, and both of them froze. If I had a guess there is some kind of backlash from killing any of an elemental lord's superiors. We took the chance to kill Custodian, but could not get through the other’s anima before he woke up again, killed Grant, and fled.”

Tristan remembered the Lord of the Underworld’s ability to command other elementals from the time Hailey’s memories had invaded his own. It was jarring, Hailey had just wanted to stay with her husband and start a farm. Her elemental remnant would have most likely planted any seeds that it could get ahold of. It had been ordered to dig, then kill. That control suddenly getting severed, may not cause catastrophic failure, but it would create a serious conflict of perceived goals.

Glancing over towards the trench, Tristan could see smoke rising. The battle looked small from this distance. For a moment Tristan hoped the Lake Caldera won despite missing all their tier fours. Then he realized that the elementals in the Forest Caldera army had all lost their coordination. The four hundred tier threes would suddenly have nothing keeping them from cutting their way through the enemy army.

They had won. The only enemy left was a fleeing elemental lord. It was dangerous, yes, but it was nothing compared to the Lord of the Underworld. Tristan felt strange. This was the first time he had not needed to look for danger and it felt less comforting than he had thought it would. Everything started with the sifting, then the ghost crabs, followed by a civil war and capped off with the elementals.

“What do we do now?” Tristan asked, looking up at Siren.

“We party!” Luke cheered.

Siren gave a pained half smile, “Yes, we celebrate, then we rebuild. We rebuild a lot.”

Maybe. Tristan was not sure how much there truly was to rebuild. The Caldera went from somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand people, down to a bit over fifteen thousand. Nothing had happened to the River Caldera and the Lake Caldera was mostly untouched. There was more infrastructure than they needed.

Siren seemed to read the question in Tristan’s eyes, “People, we will need to rebuild people. Our pride has been shattered, our culture destroyed. Most people have lost someone precious. I don’t think it is possible to recover within our lifetime, but we have to try.”