The puppet like cadavers lurched towards Tristan, moving in a jerking pattern that made him wonder if they had ever walked before. They were able to move at a decent speed, their upper torsos leaned precariously forward. Tristan briefly considered meeting them in hand-to-hand combat. He really needed to stress test the absorption force, however, he had a better option at the current moment.
A blade formed around the shaft of Vulcan. The soul tool complained, “Do not stick me in those rotting corpses.”
“Tree men don’t like axes,” Tristan attempted to explain as he chopped down on the body of the closest tree man.
Its forward posture made its momentum easy to redirect into the tile floor. Tristan jerked the large axe out of the creature’s torso and sidestepped the next creature. He tripped the third one as it rumbled past, then slammed his weapon down on its neck. A movement out of the corner of his eye caused him to step back.
Tristan frowned as the creature he had first struck clawed at him. The gash he had made from shoulder to naval was nearly healed over. He had been working under the assumption that these were like elementals. He had destroyed both the heart and organ sack if they were present. Glancing down he saw the beheaded one grab its head and replace it.
“Uh, Vulcan have you ever dealt with anything that can’t die before?” Tristan asked. He was more capable than these plants, but he would be worn down eventually if he couldn’t find a way to put them down.
“No, you aren’t either. You kill it exactly like any other growth force specialist,” Vulcan said, “Feed it to something that can eat it while it regenerates.”
Tristan was about to yell at Vulcan. Where was he supposed to find a giant vegetarian monster? Then he realized what Vulcan meant and pointed the flickering tip of the soul tool at the prone tree man and blasted him with a ball of combustion enhanced fire. The reaction was immediate, the tree man started shrieking and rolling around on the ground.
He had not been aware that these creatures could make noise. It did not emanate from the head but from the torso. Tristan was not sure of the mechanics of the sound, but from how the other two backed away they could also feel fear. He could use that. Tristan walked up to the burning tree man, thrust his hand into the flames, and grabbed it by the neck.
The flames around his hand died as all the kinetic energy was drained out of them. His arm also rose to an uncomfortable temperature as it released the energy as heat. That did not stop him from throwing the tree man at his friends. It was surprisingly light, he had expected the wooden body to be as heavy as an equal sized person, if not a little heavier. Instead, it was launched across the room like the fifty-pound doll it was.
The other two tried to evade, one succeeded, but the other was struck across the legs. Tristan raised an eyebrow as the fire greedily spread to the new fuel source. The first flame had combustion laced into it, but that targeted material that he wanted to burn, making it more flammable. None of the flame jumping to the new tree man benefitted from the combustion force, yet it burned just as well as any other dry kindling.
Glancing at the final one Tristan decided he needed to pull this thing apart and figure out how it worked. He was not being sadistic, he would probably meet a stronger version of these things at the center of the city. If he wanted to win, he needed to figure out how to kill it without relying on its weakness, as a more powerful variant might have eliminated that weakness entirely.
Tristan dismissed Vulcan to the primordial realm, the axe blade addition falling uselessly to the ground. He lunged forward at the final tree man. He used a swift palm heel block to push the claw swipe aside, then grabbed the upper arm. It cringed back, giving Tristan pause before he dumped some decay alloy into its arm. If this thing could comprehend death, then maybe.
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“Can you understand me?” Tristan asked.
“It's a plant,” Vulcan scoffed, “It doesn’t have a brain.”
The brainless plant answered, “understand.”
Vulcan was speechless, which was fine, Tristan had his own questions, primarily, “What are you?”
“Spriggon,” the tree man said, its voice raspy, like two planks of rough-hewn lumber being rubbed together.
That explained nothing to Tristan, so he tightened his grip. To his surprise, the wood started cracking under his fingers. Tristan instantly reduced the pressure of his grip. It should have come as no surprise that a fifty-pound creature the same size as a human would be substantially less dense. He expected the creature, no spriggon, to cry out, but the wood healed and it had no reaction to the pain.
“What is a spriggon?” Tristan asked.
“Me,” the spriggon said unhelpfully.
This was getting nowhere, so Tristan changed the line of questioning, “Why did you kill all the people here?”
“Not kill,” the creature said. It was staring impassively at Tristan. At least that was what he assumed, as the face had no expression.
Tristan narrowed his eyes, “You literally grew from a human corpse that you parasitized.”
“Good soil,” The spriggon rasped in its infuriatingly short sentences.
“Are you full grown?” Tristan asked.
For the first time, the spriggon did not answer right away. It glanced at the still twitching bodies of its companions, then back to Tristan. This went on for a few moments. Tristan had never seen someone so blatantly considering if they could get away with lying.
The spriggon decided on its answer, “Yes.”
So it was not full grown. However if Tristan let it get away with the lie, then it would become bolder and might even lose the tells that helped Tristan identify them. Six unblinking pits and a smooth face were ineffective at transferring expression. So Tristan squeezed, and as soon as the wood cracked, he poured decay alloy in.
At first, the spriggon did not react, simply staring ahead soullessly. Then when the decay started eating away at the new growth, a shiver ran through the creature’s body. Tristan watched as whatever circulatory system the spriggon had started darkening as it carried the the corrupting influence of decay down the arm.
“You doing what?” The spriggon finally asked.
“Do you know what happens to humans when they die?” Tristan asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer, “That's what I’m doing to you right now. You lied, you should not have done that. Tell the truth, how strong do spriggons get?”
The spriggon shivered again, before answering, “Much stronger.” Tristan sighed and pushed more decay into the limb, “Big spriggons called ents. Spriggon needs to be many spriggons stronger to be ent.”
It might have been absurd to expect a tree monster to have the same tier system as humans. However, by translating the sentence Tristan. Could assume that an ent was simply a heroic spriggon. Tier six was where every human would get a force, it would make sense that beasts would have a similar divide.
“Are all spriggons and ents weak to fire?” Tristan asked.
“Yes,” The spriggon scoffed, “All creature harmed by flame.”
Tristan had many questions, but only a few he needed to know, “How do you know how to speak with me?”
This was important. If they could all communicate, he could stumble upon an organized group. If they were subjugating humans and learning from them, then this might become a rescue mission. A part of Tristan hoped that no one had been kept down here in the dark like livestock. What he rescued would not even be human at that point.
“Memories from soil,” the spriggon rasped.
Tristan was about to simply cut his losses and melt the stupid creature. However, Vulcan interrupted, “I believe it's talking about chemical memories. Anything you do often burns pathways into the mind, and that includes speech. It's why someone with total amnesia can typically still speak.”
That was a bit horrifying. It could speak because it ate a human brain. While it was not the best case scenario, at least they would not be constructing some hyper-advanced weaponry with outside knowledge. They would coordinate, but with fire, he could even the playing field. Tristan frowned, was it even lopsided to start with?
Looking to the door he decided to experiment. It still stood open on its rusty hinges, Tristan dragged the spriggon outside and threw it across the cobblestone yard. Tristan did not put a lot of effort into the throw, so it only went halfway to the pedestal in the center.
The spriggon slowly got to its feet, and asked with disbelief, “You let spriggon go?”
“If you can run fast enough,” Tristan answered as his suspicions were confirmed.
The spriggon cocked its head in confusion, demonstrating those human habits. Then a skeletal stone hand wrapped around the rotten arm and tore it off. The spriggon screamed as elementals piled on top of it tearing it apart as fast as it could heal. Tristan nodded, the elementals in the mine had wanted to fight cultists, and technically the Caldera had been taken over by that cult’s followers. It would stand to reason that these elementals also wanted revenge. After all, the biggest regret of all is dying in helplessness.