It takes all of a split second to register what just happened. I suck air through my teeth and command my body to fall, screaming air and pelting salt whipping by as my awareness falters bit by bit. The thought that the elemental is bringing us down here to kill us briefly flashes through my mind, but I shove it away just as quickly.
We need each other for now. If she killed us, it’d be the same as killing herself in a few days.
“Watch… signal… salt.” March’s voice crackles into my ear, and even though I missed most of the words, I get the picture. “I… be… any help.”
A sharp tone splits my ear directly through the earpiece. I wince and reach up to pull it away, but before I can get my fingers around the device, the noise cuts out.
“Just put ‘em on local mode.” Ursula says clear as day from a dozen feet higher than me. “Looks like the salt only screws with signals going into or out of it, not ones already inside of it. That’d be damn good encryption if we could get our hands on it.”
I glance up at a light popping noise to see Ursula swipe a glass jar through the salty fog. Must be nice to be as calm and collected as she is to collect samples in a moment like this. The mist completely overtakes us, swallowing everything whole for all of five seconds.
Solid metal meets my feet. I wince at the shockwave that shoots through my bones all the way to rattle my teeth, stumbling forward as the weightlessness of the salt buff is ripped away. The elemental stands a few feet away from me in a pile of jagged salt crystals that slowly knit together to reform her shattered tail.
“You didn’t know there was–” I start, but remember Ursula just in time. “Metal down here, Mercenary. Brace for impact.”
“AAAAHthankyou!” Ursula grunts as blue explodes out of the bottom of her feet, expanding into thick puddles that shatter into a billion pieces as they absorb her impact. “Phew. Nice warning, Gambler. Would’ve had to dip into the health potions if it didn’t come.” She turns to the elemental and pauses. “How’d you break?”
“I was not aware of the lack of salt at the very bottom.” The elemental says as her body reknits itself. “It would appear that the Gambler was the only one of us who managed to react in time.”
I ignore what I’m not sure is a compliment and take a good look around. Salt thorns burst up through the metal floor absolutely everywhere, caked in salt vegetation so thick that they look like strange works of art. But the salt doesn’t expand from the jagged holes in the metal, leaving the ground almost perfectly intact everywhere else.
“Weird. Almost looks like the ground is salt-proof.” I note as I rub the salt mist from my forehead before it can drip into my eyes. “Does that mean the heart’s really close?”
“No. As you had seen from the previous heart, it does not have any innate properties that prevent salt from clinging to it.” The elemental gestures at a thorn a few dozen feet from us. “I previously pierced the heart with this thorn. We will travel through it.”
She flashes bright for a second. Molten salt burbles and froths in an arch until there’s a visible indent in the thorn, quickly cooling as the stuff sloughs off to make us a welcome mat.
“So what was all that timing bullshit?” Ursula asks as we all crowd into the elevator-sized indent. The elemental’s tail wraps around all of us, leaving barely any space to move. “If we just had to walk into a thorn, then what was the point?”
The elemental raises a hand and the thorn seals us in. A sensation of movement hits me right in the stomach. “There are currents in the mists that make it quite difficult to find the correct place. If we had fallen any later, we could have ended up on the complete opposite side of our objective. Any earlier and we may have found ourselves surrounded by elemental-possessed apocalyptic monsters.”
Ursula elbows the elemental in the chest. “And you couldn’t tell us that while we were flying because…?”
“I did not think to mention it. Apologies.”
For some reason, that’s enough for Ursula. She nods and crosses her arms, leaning back against the back of the makeshift elevator far more casually than she should be in this situation. I shoot her a confused look, but thanks to the helmet, all I get is a shrug in return.
Did I miss something? Is there a reason why Ursula decided to trust the elemental way more than she did half an hour ago? I purse my lips and look to Pearl for any help, but she, too, can only offer me a shrug. At least she has the decency to look amused by Ursula’s change of heart.
My stomach hits the top of my throat as pressure builds in my knees.
“We have arrived.” The elemental states. The door cuts itself into being once more, revealing a metal room filled with huge chunks of salt strewn haphazardly about. “I apologize for the mess. There was a far greater threat here that it seems has disappeared. Quite a stroke of luck for us.”
“Yeah, luck.” Ursula states flatly as she walks into the room and looks around. She doesn’t even go for her guns. After close to thirty seconds of pinched silence as the elemental and I pull ourselves out of the room she turns back to us and motions at the back wall. “Salty, can you undo the crystals blocking that vent up there? And all the panels marked with ‘X’s around the room.”
I raise an eyebrow at how quickly Ursula took charge this time. “What lit a fire under your ass between the last heart and this one?”
Ursula taps her foot as the elemental clears away the salt she asked for. “This room ain’t the same as the one before, but I’ve got some heat signatures suggesting that there’s stuff trapped in exactly the places I pointed out. Can your awareness feel any imminent danger from ‘em?”
There’s no reason to focus for a better look. “Nothing. Not even a single elemental.”
“Mmh. That’s what I’m worried about.” Ursula mutters to herself as she walks up to the vent and bends down. “I studied the last krarig pretty damn in depth when the reports came out, and the one heart they didn’t blow to smithereens looked a hell of a lot like this one. Vents everywhere, panels covering random parts of the walls, and no equipment to be found. You know how squid hearts work, Gambler?”
“Nope. But I can guess that there’s three of them?”
She kicks off the vent flap with the world’s tiniest explosion. “Three hearts, yeah. Simple version is that there’s two lesser ones and one main one; with the main one having three chambers. Salty?”
“I still don’t like that.” The elemental says, but moves for Ursula anyway. “How can I be of assistance?”
Ursula gestures at the vent. “Go in there and see if there’s actually three separate rooms. The two of us are too heavy for the ductwork, and we’ve got… other things we need to do. Come back when you know how to take this one over.”
The elemental hesitates, as if it has something to say, but slips into the vent without saying a word. When she’s gone Ursula nods over at the panels the elemental revealed for us.
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“Rip ‘em open and look for another one of the symbols.” Ursula says, then beelines for a panel and starts doing exactly that. The sound of shearing metal sends a shiver down my spine, which is echoed by another unnatural spike of magic. Not from Ursula, but from… something else.
Maybe the thing the elemental alluded to.
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Twenty minutes of pulling panels later, we’re done with the room. Ursula and I both have absolutely nothing to show for the effort, save for a few chunks of pulsating circuitry out of maybe fifty panels. None of them trickle greasy gunk, thankfully, but they do… stink a little. Like fish left out in the summer sun for just a little too long.
A clunking in the vents heralds the elemental’s return.
“I have returned.” The elemental states as it pulls itself out of the vent. “And I have dealt with the issue that previously plagued this heart.”
She fully removes her body from the vent, trailing her long tail behind her. Which is wrapped around a long, slender piece of apocalypse-touched machinery that looks dangerously like a massive drill bit.
Ursula leans back and sniffs. “That’s the dangerous thing? Salty, everything we fought in the other heart was ten times more deadly than… that.”
“Dangerous and deadly are not necessarily one and the same. And do not call me salty.” The elemental flicks her tail, letting the ‘corpse’ screech over to where Ursula and I stand. “It had the ability to bore deep into the metal at a moment’s notice. Chasing it down was quite the annoyance, but now that it is gone, it cannot chip away the salt from this heart.”
“Neat. Did you see any weird looking symbols like the one on the other heart’s panel while you were running around?” Ursula asks.
“Yes.”
I sigh through my nose. “More info, please.”
The elemental’s glow… pulsates a little. Somehow, it feels smug. She reaches behind her back and reveals a fist-sized box wrapped in countless metal wires. Wires that, when turned to exactly one side, reveal a skull-like symbol.
“This was inside one of the vents.” She tosses the box to Ursula, who then tosses it to me. The elemental looks mildly befuddled by that. “I have already salted the other two chambers. This one will take no longer than a minute.”
I nod absentmindedly as I pick at the wires and step aside to let the elemental do her thing. They’re not overly thick–about as wide as a rubber band all the way around–but they’re pressed in tight. From the looks of the connecting points that seep with deep black solder, whoever did this was an amateur. Or didn’t give a shit about how it looked as long as the skull was visible.
My knife cuts through them all the same. With a nearly musical crescendo they pop free one by one, sailing into the air as the build-up tension is released. The first one surprised the hell out of me–since I wasn’t expecting them to be under any pressure–but the rest of them are kind of cathartic. Like watching popcorn pop.
Once they’re all gone, I’m left with nothing but a simple black metal box. With actual hinges at the top and a few simple welds keeping it shut. Welds meet knife. Box creaks open to give me a peek at the goodies inside.
Goodie. Singular, actually, as there’s only one thing in there. A tiny bottle of jet-black ink that sparkles ever so slightly with silver flakes when the light of the room hits it. I dismiss the magic in my knife and gently grab it between two fingers, extracting it from its metal prison. Which I promptly toss to the side and forget about.
“Hey, watch it.” Ursula says even though the box didn’t come within twenty feet of her. But she still gets the eye-roll from me she was looking for. “You could’ve put someone’s eye out with that.”
I shoot her an annoyed glance. “You’ve got a helmet. And the elemental doesn’t even have eyes.”
Ursula sighs and trods over to me, planting a hand on my shoulder. “Ah, there’s nothing better than having my joke explained back to me. So, what’s in the box? Just the ink, or are you hiding something from me?”
“Didn’t have time to hide much of anything, thank you very much.” I hold up the ink for her to see. She doesn’t reach out to grab it. “Looks like pretty bog-standard ink to me. My awareness says it isn’t anything magical, either.”
“Then it’s probably just ink.” Ursula turns to the elemental and whistles. “Hey, salty! If you’re done screwing around, we’ve got one more heart to deal with.”
The elemental disconnects her hand from the pulsing circuitry. “I am done. And I am not ‘salty’, as I have informed you multiple times.” She slithers over to us, then nearly barges into us as she beelines for the door. “The last heart should have nothing inside of it. But it is quite a trek from where we are. I would prefer you did not collapse on me on the way there.”
I roll my eyes and let a coin drop to the floor as I make my way to the elevator. Ursula notices, but from under her helmet, I can’t tell if she’s trying to make an expression at me. But hey, I’m the one with the contingency plans. She can be confused about them all she likes.
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Climbing up one of the thorns to get into the salt mist, which in turn reactivated our buffs, was the most exciting part about the third heart. Mostly it was just a long-ass run through the depths of the krarig, occasional fights against apocalypse-touched shit that went down pretty easily in the face of our combined might, and the occasional verbal jab from Ursula directed at the elemental.
It feels like they’re slowly becoming friends. Even more so now that the elemental has two hearts under her control. I swear I’m not imagining that her core glows along with what I assume are her emotions, and she’s been speaking a little freer by the minute. Is Ursula trying to do this on purpose? Is she coaxing a personality out of the elemental, little by little?
Well, if she is, then that personality is definitely going to hate the word ‘salty’ with a passion. Considering how much the elemental hates it already.
“Do not call me salty.” The elemental says with something that almost sounds like variation in her voice. “I will not show you the next heart if you keep calling me salty.”
“Aw, you hate it so much that you’d consign yourself to death just to get me to stop saying it.” Ursula laughs and nudges the elemental with her elbow. “That’s adorable. And could be completely fixed if you just told me what your name actually is.”
The elemental’s cores shine in bright lines. “I already informed you that I do not have a name. No amount of emotional prodding will get me to admit something that does not exist.”
“Then just make one up.” I sigh from the lead position that I somehow found myself in. “You’re a living, thinking thing. Think up a name you won’t hate. But do it after we make sure we aren’t all going to randomly die.”
To emphasize my point, I gesture at the faraway heart, hanging from a massive thorn sticking out of the ceiling by thick cables and thin, pulsating strands of solid grease. The heart’s been visible for a good five minutes now, but something’s been slowing the elemental’s roll. She turns from Ursula to me for a second, then skims right over and locks onto the heart.
“You are correct. I have yet to visit this heart, but as such, it is unlikely other elementals have found a way inside.” The elemental overtakes me in a heartbeat and a whirl of wind. “I will think on the topic of a name for myself. Anything to prevent Mercenary from addressing me with that horrid nickname.”
“What? Salty ain’t so bad.” Ursula says with what I imagine is a wolfish grin. “It’s pretty damn fitting, since you’re salty in form and in personality. In fact, I can’t really think of a better name for you than–”
The elemental clenches both of her fists. Salty mist pours off of her, boils in the air, and disappears. Moments later the thorn connected to the heart starts to rumble, creak, and blossom with thousands of small growths that look a little like closed tulips. Something tugs on my awareness to get me to stop, and I hold out an arm to keep Ursula from getting any closer.
One by one, the tulips open. One by one, thick strands of molten salt drip down onto the heart, each containing enough magic for my awareness to scream danger at me. Pearl gasps in shock. Ursula makes a noise in the back of her throat that could be either grudging respect or outright fear.
Just as the entire heart is encased in salt, a massive thorn erupts straight through the middle of it. Spines branch off as it grows, spearing the heart through like a frog that tried to swallow a porcupine. A head-sized chunk of metal soars through the air, slams down on the ground a few feet away from us, and skids right into the elemental’s waiting tail.
She gently reaches down to grab it, studies it for a second, then slowly turns it towards us. Revealing that it’s got hinges keeping it shut and a goat hastily painted on the dented side.
“It seems that I’ve found your last piece.” She states as her core smugly pulsates. “I would be quite happy to give it to you. As long as you refrain from calling me that horrid nickname.”