Tristan moved deeper into the city. His guard was up now, slowing him down. Between the child elemental and the parasitized corpse, he was getting freaked out.
As he approached the center of the sprawling business district, more and more elementals showed up. Some were attempting to build structures by stacking the rubble. Others were hard at work within the shops. He saw one that was a seamstress in life embroidering a cloth. Only she had been at it so long that it was less of a cloth and more of a fabric brick.
Tristan had somewhat expected this. The closer he got to the area where these people died the more elementals there should be. That assumption was abruptly disproven when he stepped into a large cobblestone courtyard. Cobblestones were used in the wealthier homes in the Caldera, but they were large estates. The low ceiling gave it a more sinister air. All the silent elementals did not help the atmosphere either.
The open area was large, at least one hundred feet in every direction except up. In the center was a large pedestal crafted from stone. It looked like one of the pedestals from the temple, but instead of carrying the likeness of a god, a giant stone book sat open atop it. All the elementals were waving their arms in the air. Some held their bare skulls and appeared to be weeping.
Tristan had been down here long enough to start passing up the riches that were the essence reservoirs from these elementals. The first dozen had been too much to pass up, but it was unsettling to cut the heart out of a creature minding its own business. At least that is what Tristan told himself.
There was a large building just beyond the pedestal, on the opposite side of the courtyard. It was made of the same stone as everything else, but more effort had been put into the architecture. Actual windows ran down the walls on either side, an extravagant waste nearly eighty feet below the surface. The same book on the pedestal was carved above the door, was this a school?
Tristan eyed the weeping elementals. That was a bit of an extreme reaction to failing one’s education. The Lake Caldera had a school, though it was mostly created to take advantage of Hadrid being on the other side of the lake. It dealt with essence study and artifact creation. Not able to make any sense of the writing above the door, Tristan turned to his translator.
“Vulcan, is this a school? Are people really so dedicated to education that they would leave an elemental with that regret?” Tristan frowned, it seemed shallow. Not getting educated, but being so attached to a location that one’s specter would be there weeping.
“It is a church,” Vulcan said.
It was a short answer, but Tristan frowned at the feeling that he got from Vulcan. He had felt both frustration and aversion, like it was something sticky he couldn’t get off his hands. Tristan probed “Why do you dislike it so much? Also, what’s a church?”
Vulcan sighed, “It's like a temple, but they made the god up. This particular strain is annoying for any leader, “ At Tristan’s expectant silence he continued, “This one has a god called Yirah the unseen provider. It was around in my empire, they teach people to work hard, stay healthy, and honor the law.”
Tristan started edging around the cobblestone courtyard towards the doors. Hadrid had commented that the forces he witnessed were put together by someone and that it was not the three gods of the temple. While he did not have very high hopes for this one either, he suspected a long enough search would attain results. Tristan was not sure what tier that person would have to be, however, he knew that if one person could reach it, then two people could.
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“What’s so bad about that?” Tristan asked, not understanding the issue with a diligent population.
“The empire’s law was not the one they primarily obeyed. Before you ask why, understand that my Uncle was considered the strongest god of our empire's pantheon,” Vulcan explained seriously, “Faith has a real power and to squander it on something that doesn’t exist is foolish. Do you remember how I told you that chanting can speed up essence recovery? Well, that’s massively increased when your god shares your essence type. My uncle also got something out of the chanting, but he said I would not understand until I had gotten stronger. So, these places are a massive waste of a valuable resource and weaken your pantheon against other pantheons. It could end up destroying an empire and killing millions of people. You saw what Viral did, imagine that, but over half a continent, that's what places like this enable.”
Tristan could see why Vulcan would be so angry about places like this. He had no idea how large a continent was, but he assumed it to be at least ten times the size of the Caldera. However, Vulcan was raised as nobility, following a path similar to the one Tristan had been born into. His uncle was Elder Forest and Tristan was the heir apparent, until one of these gods said he shouldn’t be. He was not inclined to give his allegiance to any of these beings. They were selfish and surprisingly petty in their actions.
Would he give his allegiance to an imaginary god? No, however, that was not his purpose in entering the church. He mentally filed away the difference, churches believed in intangible gods, whereas the temples believed in tangible ones. It was a good thing to know as he suspected people would get offended if he used the terms interchangeably.
He pulled the doors open. The screech of rusty hinges echoed through the cavern, causing Tristan to tense and look around. After a few moments of nothing happening, Tristan sighed and stepped inside. The hinges were so corroded that the door stayed open.
Holding up Vulcan for light, Tristan looked around. The first thing he noticed was the foyer was filled with bookshelves. That was surprising because the doors didn’t have a lock on them. So this place had a surprisingly low crime rate. There were still books on the shelves, but moss had grown over them. Upon opening one to see if the inside had survived, it fell apart into clumps that blew a cloud of green dust into the air.
He did not think anything of it until his essence reserves rose above one hundred percent. Frowning, he took a look at what was happening, and just like Vulcan had said, his rarely used consumption alloy was tearing through something entering his lungs. Tristan glanced back at the green cloud and quickly stepped out of it.
Immediately the influx of extra essence started to abate. Tristan quickly expelled the decay alloy that had been charged by the waste product of the consumption. It pooled on the ground before oozing towards the nearest drain. He assumed it would end up in the river and ruin some fish’s day.
“Am I right in assuming that was a kind of spore attack?” Tristan asked.
“Attack might be a stretch, but yes those were fungal spores,” Vulcan chuckled, “And you basically treated them like a snack.”
Tristan nodded, took a deep breath, grimaced at the small bump in essence buildup that the action generated, and continued farther in. The building was very simple. There was the library, a lecture hall, a kitchen, and not much else. The lecture hall had a few bodies in it. Tristan contemplated going in for a better inspection of the room, but he had no interest in walking around the mutilated corpses.
Tristan stepped back and reached for the door of the lecture hall. It had been open before, and a part of Tristan wanted a barrier to the kneeling bodies. The door did not budge, so Tristan slammed it. He expected a screech as the hinges moved, instead the hinges tore out of the wall. The door swung shut, then kept going.
Tristan contemplated trying to catch it, but he was only trying to shut it for his own self-comfort. He made up his mind to leave, anything that he would find here would be corrupted by fungus, or be illegible. At least that was the plan until one of the bodies caught the door falling toward it.
“Slag, that's disturbing,” Vulcan commented in response.
Tristan backpedaled as all three corpses turned their faces towards him in unison. They were completely made of wood, twisted bark covered its entire body. The eye sockets, all six of them, were empty voids on a wooden mask like face.
“Vulcan, what is that!” Tristan said it out loud and more shrilly than he intended.
“I don’t know,” Vulcan said, more calmly, “You should kill it though.”
Tristan pushed down the fear of the unknown and observed the things objectively. They had two arms and legs, their extra eyes shouldn’t give a greater range of vision. A pair sat above the natural positions and a pair just below. No nose or mouth either. The arms ended in wooden claws and the feet were tipped in similar claws. Root like spikes ran down either side of their spine. A thin coating of moss covered random patches of the body.
All three lurched to their feet. Tristan examined their unsteady gait and nodded, he could fight these.