Slurries of oil, grease, and more than a little molten salt thunder against my shields as we walk through the waterfall. The impact is more than enough to start cracking the magic inside, yet somehow, the liquids simply flow off like a pleasant stream. I look up at the spray, trying to figure out just how all this stuff got here–or, more accurately, why it’s here–but I can’t come up with anything.
I mean, I guess it makes sense for an oil rig to have oil. But it should’ve been in the pump room, not flowing out of a massive chunk of metal. Even if the elemental seems to think it’s a heart.
“Lord almighty, this is one big waterfall.” Ursula whistles after close to a minute of walking directly under flow. “I swear it didn’t look this thick when we were overhead. Did it look this thick to you?”
“No, it did not. But the rig also didn’t look like it’d have a few miles of wilderness inside of it, so I guess I’m not that surprised.” I fill two more coins with shields, then summon them a little bit under the ones that are already covering us. “The first ones are going to break any moment now. Not sure if anything weird’s going to happen when they do so be ready for whatever.”
Ursula looks up and pokes at the fresh shield. “You’ve got some insane precision with these things. Most people with a spell like this struggle to put it between them and the thing trying to kill them, nevermind all the insane shit you’ve been doing. Guess you’re a natural, huh?”
I roll my eyes at her. Through the slurry. Which I can somehow see through perfectly. But not… the same kind of perfect. Ursula’s all black outlines, like she coated herself in that paint that’s completely black, and so are my shields. My awareness crawls over her form completely and utterly, which is… really weird. It hasn’t done this before. Maybe it’s the salt doing it?
The waterfall parts not ten seconds later before my first shields have a chance to crack. I click my tongue at the waste of Worth, though I don’t regret my choice at all. The ambient stench of the greasy waterfall is bad enough. Salt and light barely brighten a dim cavern about the size of an underground train platform, revealing a nearly completely empty space. Save for a chunk of salt with a massive piece taken out of it and a few elemental orbs lazily floating through the air.
“Nice place you’ve got here.” Ursula says sarcastically. “If you already have this, then why did we see you falling from the metal chunk?”
“Because I was up there.” The elemental says as its lower body coils around itself until the elemental can lean back on a throne made of… itself, I guess. “We are underneath it right now. I will open up a tunnel in the salt above us and we will go inside.”
Ursula holds up her hands. “Whoa there. We’re not going anywhere until you give us a better explanation.”
“Very well. State your questions.”
“Well… alright…” Ursula glances over at me for permission. I motion for her to go ahead. “First things first; what should we call you? And how come none of these other elementals are like you?”
“That is two questions.” The elemental states. “To your first; I do not have a name. To your second; I do not have an explanation.”
No clarification again, of course. Ursula crosses her arms and hums to herself, then turns to me. Waiting for me to ask a question if I had to bet. The thorns sending shudders through me make it hard to put together any really competent questions, but one manages to bubble through the sensations to land on the tip of my tongue.
“Where were you before this?”
The elemental turns and looks at me. “Nowhere.”
“No, I mean, where was all this salt before it came here? That dump truck was from somewhere else, that’s for damn sure, so did the salt come with it? Or what about the magic?” I continue. “Not just you, but the salt in general.”
“I have no memory before this krarig. As for the magic, I am not aware of where it began.”
Helpful, as I’m beginning to expect everything the elemental is going to say will be. I motion for Ursula to ask another question, but she’s deep in thought. At least I think that’s what tapping her helmet while she taps her foot in time means. Which means I’m in the driver’s seat for now.
“How much power do you have over this place?” I pause, then shake my head before the elemental can respond. “Actually, let me be specific; when we were in the room with the sunflowers, were you the one that stopped them from firing and brought the elementals in?”
Its eyes dim slightly, then brighten once more. It… almost looked like it was trying to blink. Or at least mimicking what blinking looks like.
“I was responsible for a part of it.” The elemental admits without a hint of any emotion. “When I attempted to make contact, I brought you to the attention of the others. Though it was their intervention that stopped the flora from performing their natural functions.”
“Natural functions. Right.” Ursula scoffs and rubs her arm. “So you’re really good at communicating, but don’t really have any other powers. That about right?”
“That is approximately seventy-five percent correct.”
Ursula waits for the clarification on the remaining twenty five percent. The elemental stares at her while she stares at the elemental, which goes on for… a little too long. Eventually I elbow her and clear my throat, to which she sighs in annoyance and slightly tilts her head back.
“What’s that last twenty-five percent, salty?”
The elemental finally flinches. It’s just a little twitch of its hands, but it doesn’t go unnoticed. Either by Ursula or by me, and especially by Pearl. Who looks like she’s holding in her laughter by just a few straws of willpower.
“I do not like being called ‘salty’.” The elemental states just as emotionlessly as ever. “Refrain from addressing me as such. As for your question; the other twenty-five percent of my power is allocated to the creation and maintenance of this magical salt.”
“Explain, please.” Ursula says immediately after the elemental stops talking.
“Certainly. My abilities allow me to create constructs from the salt, including bodies such as the one I inhabit and the flowers you have interacted with.”
That seems… far-fetched. There’s no way the elemental did everything we’ve seen so far. There’s literal miles of the stuff, and a bunch of damn complex additions worked into it. Then again… not all the salt we’ve seen has been plant-based. The tunnel to the pump room was pretty much just carved out of crystals, and a lot of the stuff near the clover and sunflowers was just crystal too.
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Wait, what am I doing? I can just ask the thing.
“How much of the salt plant and non-plant salt stuff did you make?”
“All of the plant-like crystals are my doing. None of the non-plant crystals are my doing.”
That’s still a shitton of work. “So, uh, why did you do it?”
“I…” The elemental trails off until it goes completely silent. “I do not have an answer for that. I suppose I simply wanted to.”
“As good a reason as any.” Ursula says. “At least it proves you’re thinking about things and not just regurgitating facts. Not that it helps me trust you any, but since it doesn’t look like we’re getting that info out of you, I’ve got one last question.”
Ursula jabs a thump up at the ceiling. “You said we’re going up. How?”
The elemental looks up. Heat radiates through the general cold of the place as a spot of light grows on the ceiling. It expands in a near perfect circle until it’s the size of a manhole cover, then suddenly flashes and grows twofold in an instant. The molten circle sloughs away to reveal a perfect tunnel as a thin layer of salt splatters to the ground between us and the elemental.
“You hid it?” Ursula asks as she looks up. “What’re you hiding it from?”
“The others.” The elemental explains succinctly. “As for how we will ascend; you already have the tools to do so. Follow me.”
It slithers over the still molten salt, absorbing all of it into their tail, and ascends in a blur of motion and magic. I have to blink a few times and glance over my shoulder to confirm that’s actually what happened, and sure enough, it’s the truth. Ursula and I share a glance, she shrugs, and then steps directly under the hole the elemental made.
“Looks like salty’s waiting for us.” Ursula says with a smirk in her voice. “Wouldn’t want to keep her waiting, now would we?”
Something like a… grumble works its way into my mind. I knit my eyebrows together at the strange sensation as Pearl’s laugh dam finally breaks and makes way for a series of rapid-fire giggles. The roar of the waterfall dulls them out, but if March was paying a little closer attention, there’s no way she didn’t hear them. But nobody says anything, so we’re still good.
“Wait, why’d you call it ‘she’?”
Ursula shrugs and jumps without answering me. I purse my lips and step forward a little, staring all the way up to the darkness inside of the metal chunk illuminated only by the elemental’s molten glow. Whatever’s up there is one-hundred percent needed to stop the krarig from waking up. But that’d involve giving the elemental complete access to the entire krarig.
I reach up and tap my communicator. “Architect, can you monitor what the elemental is doing from here?”
“Already doing it.” March responds immediately. “If it looks like it’s going to take over the krarig for itself, then I’ll tell you. But I don’t think it’s going to. There’s something weird about it.”
“Weird how?”
March crunches on something as she says a few words that get completely overshadowed by the noise.
“Sorry, didn’t catch that.”
“No problem. I said the elemental is weird because it’s desperate. I think it knows that we want to destroy the krarig, and it can probably assume that we’d want to destroy it anyway even if it takes control of it.”
Okay, yeah, that’s a little weird. I kick off the ground and fly into darkness as I think on March’s words; if she’s right, and the elemental knows it’s going to die either way, then why’s it trying so hard? Ursula and the elemental come into focus long before I can come to any kind of an answer, and the elemental waits exactly two seconds for me to orient myself before it takes off horizontally. Far enough that its eyes are barely pinpricks in the darkness.
Which means we’ve just stepped into another place that’s bigger on the inside. And completely dark. Wonderful. I push off the moment Ursula does and follow the elemental into the darkness.
And follow it.
And follow it. For minutes that stretch on in near complete darkness. My jaw clenches in anticipation of wherever the elemental is bringing us, the strain slowly working its way up the side of my head until I can feel the throbbing behind my eyes. Something feels wrong. More wrong than usual. But… I can’t tell what it is.
I almost plow into the elemental, skidding to a stop that takes me a dozen feet beyond it in the darkness. Ursula’s not quite as quick, and her panicked vocalizations make sure we know she’s not happy about the sudden stop.
“We have arrived.” The elemental says through Ursula’s grumbling walk back to us. “When we descend again, we will be in the middle of the heart. I have cleared it out to the best of my abilities, though I can sense others without mechanical forms patrolling the space. Be prepared.”
“Wait, we’re fighting?” I look down beyond my feet and see absolutely nothing. “How many? Are they like the one from the rooftop or the pincushion-like one that we fought with when we first got here?”
“There are currently six of them. Three of them are of the greater risk ones I spoke to you through earlier, and three of them are less dangerous.”
That’s manageable. I put my hand on my gun and nod to Ursula, who draws a gun with one hand and pulls a knife free from a leg holster with the other. She flips the knife around and inspects the blade with a click of her tongue, then slips it back in and draws a second gun instead.
She aims one of them at the elemental. It doesn’t even flinch.
“Just to make sure you know, we’ve got a way out of here. But you already knew that.” She flicks the safety off with her thumb. “If this turns out to be a trap, I’ve got a way to make sure neither you or the krarig get out of this. Don’t wanna use it due to a bunch of international treaties and a few agreements we made with the preservation, but if push comes to shove, I’ll make a gigantic hole in the ocean to make sure this place doesn’t swim away with you at the helm.”
The elemental’s light flares ever so slightly. “Your threat is documented and acknowledged. As are the treaties and agreements you previously mentioned. I will do nothing to require such explosive retribution.”
Ursula doesn’t seem convinced. And I don’t feel the need to interfere. Guess that means I’m not convinced either. March doesn’t chime in. Pearl gestures vigorously for me to get Ursula to stop aiming the gun at the elemental’s featureless face. Probably should listen to her.
I pat Ursula on the shoulder and gently get her to lower the gun. “You’ve made good on the threat. It's more than scared enough, so let’s just see what it's talking about.”
“If you’re sure a little dim light means it’s scared, then fine.” Ursula lowers her gun the rest of the way and looks down. “Open the way, salty miss. We’ll deal with your pest problem.”
Molten light opens up far below us in a circle about the size of a dime. The elemental flares bright for a second as the light below dims, and I swear I can hear it say something in the moment of brightness. There’s no trace of anything on its face when I look up at it, same as usual, but its eyes are a little brighter. Is that because Ursula called it ‘salty miss’?
I shake my head and focus on my coins. A disliked nickname is the least of my worries right now. They world blurs by in darkness as I fall, the molten circle of light growing by the moment until it’s wide enough to let a helicopter fly through it. Then, without warning, I’m in. Light and the absurdly intense scent of salt overwhelm me for a split second. Cracking shrieks and flares of awareness take their place the next.
A shield erupts around me before an elemental can give me more holes than a colander. I spin on my heel and flick a projectile directly at it that consumes it utterly in a spray of tiny salt shards and an overwhelming flare of magic. Something tickles the back of my mind–like a cheer mixed with a cry of encouragement, and then it’s all awareness and elementals once again. Salt mercilessly batters my shield and I’m forced to bring up another as I send a second projectile into another spiny elemental.
Molten salt destroys the coin before the projectile can erupt. A human-ish elemental swivels from the attack it just launched to posture at me while the three remaining pincushions all charge at me with their thorns extended. I force another shield into my knife and lick the salt from my lips as Ursula touches down not two feet from me with both her guns already aimed at the human-ish ones. Bullets fly free. Salt erupts from the floor in huge swaths to protect the elementals. Even still the bullets crack and splinter the salt straight through, but the impact is dulled just enough that the elementals stagger backwards with bullets lodged in their chests instead of dying out right.
One easily down. The other five, apparently not so much.