The Flesh Elementalist, Book One
by Outspan Foster
The Flesh Elementalist, Book One
An Outspan Foster book
Copyright ©2019 by Outspan Foster
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Names and persons in this eBook are entirely fictional. They bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead.
Also by Outspan Foster
The Slime Series
1. SLIME: Call of Tuatha
2. SLIME: Gods
The Advocate Saga
1. Branded
Anthem of Infinity (Written with Blaise Corvin)
1. First Song, Book One
For Kemi, who was patient, kind, supporting, and kicked my lazy butt when I needed it most. Thank you.
Foreword
Okay, here's the rub. I wrote this book in a week. Actually, if we're talking time spent on the book, only a few days with life in between the writing hours. But from start to finish? Only a week. So, please keep that in mind if you see any writing errors.
Most of my writers who have been following me since the beginning understand that I all I want to do this year is pump out as many completed works as possible. The reason for this is personal. I tried to do that in 2018, but other things needed my attention. So, here I am in 2019, ready to write as many completed stories for you as possible.
If this irks you, feel free to subscribe to my Patreon. There, not only will you get the chapters as I write them, you can give me your piece of mind. Seriously. I thrive off of interaction with my fans. If you're a new reader to my work, then it may interest you to know my entire career has been built off of people giving me the most insane writing prompts with the challenge to make them good. Hopefully, I've achieved that here for you.
But remember, I literally wrote this in a week. Hahahaha. Happy reading!
1
Zack Maecker refused to lower his gaze as Rissa the overseer tallied their ore. The overseer sat at a table of ice in the main camp, counting out the stacks of kemiite that the slaves mined for the day. Rissa's giant full-time bodyguard and part-time executioner, Denn, hunched over the woman and grumbled menacingly at Zack.
Behind the pair stood the faceless ice statue of Morgoth, the god of freedom and tricks. The god held a square box-shaped item in its hands that Yemiri had once called a Tesseract.
Rissa cast an annoyed glance at Zack and put a hand on Denn to halt him as the seven foot man took a step forward. Rissa stopped counting, and Zack could practically feel all the slaves' eyes on him. He didn't care.
The overseer snarled. "Wipe that smirk from your face, Maecker. That's your second time in two weeks you've arrived for the tallies after the last bell. I see your little friend, Yemiri, isn't here either. Maybe I can get good old Denn to look for her? I think he'd like that very much."
She let the threat hang in the air, waiting for an explanation as the wind from above howled into the pit of Demon's Prospect. The fingers of her thick gloves tapped Denn's hulking hand that gripped around a sharp steel battle ax which made Zack's crude pickax look like a toothpick.
Zack knew she wanted him to cower like the other slaves would, to get on their hands and knees, bumbling some kind of excuse why he came late. He saw Rissa's hunger for his weakness.
She had called attention to his smirk, but there was nothing he could do about it as much as the other slaves couldn't do anything about the color of their blond hair. It was a part of him as his slightly darker skin and curly black locks that marked him as a foreigner. It was simple. He was a nail that stood out, and Rissa enjoyed hammering them in place.
So, he widened his smirk, causing the slaves to shift uncomfortably in their thick fur coats, pointedly not looking at him. He sneered, his smoky voice tainting his words with a low growl, "This is ridiculous. You might be running this place but you're not going to tell me what to do. And I may have been born as a third generation slave to this terrible life, but don't act like you don't have a quota too."
Rissa stood up in a rage, the hood of her fur cloak falling back to reveal the sharp, Astorian features of her face — acute cheekbones and ice-blue eyes. Denn shifted as if to move forward, but Rissa stopped him, her hand placed on her whip. "What did you just say, slave?"
Spending an entire day mining the ice tunnels for the rare kemiite exhausted Zack, but he didn't take a step back when Rissa gripped the handle of her whip. He rolled his eyes, hitched his pickax to his leather belt, and unhitched the satchel from his bag. His boots crunched against the fresh snow that had dropped in from above the pit of Demon's Prospect.
He threw the satchel on Rissa's ice table. Several dozen stones the size of a small snowball scattered all over the table, pulsing with crystalline blue light. Rissa stared at the kemiite hungrily, the grip on her whip loosening. She sat back down and cleared her throat.
Zack raised an eyebrow and rose his voice enough for the other slaves to hear it. "Unlike us, Rissa, you can do whatever you like. You're not a slave. But I'd think twice if I were you about getting rid of your best miner. I bring in three times more than anyone else, and that's not mentioning Yemiri's share."
Rissa's eyes locked on the dozens of kemiite strewn on the table, organizing them in neat piles by size and shape. Denn looked back and forth between her and Zack, clearly too stupid to know what to do. Finally, the overseer shook her head, ice in her voice. "Talk like that to me again and I'll have Denn skin you with his ax."
"He could try, but he'd lose at least an eye." Zack spat into the snow, the spit freezing nearly instantly in the cold Astorian climate. "Threaten Yemiri again, and it's not my tongue you'll have to worry about."
He picked up two small sacks next to the table as his reward for his work, turned around, and walked off to his igloo without another word, wondering what Yemiri could make with the meat he brought back from the tunnels. Zack stole a glance the two story faceless ice statue of Morgoth, the god of freedom, shaking his head at the irony of the statue's placement in the Demon's Prospect.
--
The igloo filled with the scent of seared reindeer hind, causing Zack's stomach to tighten with hunger. He was stretching, his legs split flat against the floor mat, a reindeer hide he had traded with One-Eyed Megg for extra meat a year earlier.
Yemiri squatted next to the small fire, the pot above sizzling, humming a nameless tune that filled the small igloo with her voice. Zack loved how her voice sounded like a distant bell, clear and fading. Her pale ivory skin reflected the light of the fire almost as perfectly as snow, giving her an almost ghost-appearance. She cupped a batch of snow above the pot and dropped it in.
Zack frowned, grunting as he stretched leaned into his stretch. "Why can't we just eat the meat now?"
Yemiri cast him a soft smile, adding in more fresh snow brought in from outside. "You're too impatient. If you cook it low and slow, it will come out more tender."
He didn't argue with that. It was just he was so damn hungry.
Well, everyone stuck in the Demon's Prospect was. The distribution of meat was just another way the overseers kept control of the slaves. If you didn't bring in your quota of kemiite, you wouldn't get meat. And, if you didn't get food to eat, you'd be too weak to mine the ice for more kemiite the next day.
It never stopped.
That was why the new slaves the overseers brought in almost never made it past a week in the Demon's Prospect. If the cold didn't get to them, it was the trollbears in the deep tunnels or the lack of food. Only the second and third generation slaves had the mental and
physical capacity to live like this.
Zack hated it.
Yemiri seemed to see his mood sour because she said, "Tell me one of your grandpa's stories."
He smiled. She had heard them a thousand times, or whatever the series of numbers that came after thousands was. Yemiri had tried teaching him numbers and letters like her mother had taught her, but he didn't have the patience for it. Sitting still was never his thing.
"Past Astoria's shores," he began, "Beyond the Frozen Sea, was grandpa's birth home, the Farland. It is a place full of wonder and peace -- vehicles with wheels instead of sled dogs, green spindly things called vegetables that grow from the ground that you can eat. They even have sweet vegetables called fruits with more colors than the aurora river that floats above the sky every Tundra season. Even their Winters are light, with snowflakes that melt as soon as they touch your lips."
Yemiri hummed happily in response, longing in her voice. Zack's heart constricted.
He said, "One day, Miri, I'll take you to the Farland."
She didn't say anything after that, stirring the contents of the pot with the butt of her pickax. Cooking was the only thing she ever used it for. Her thin frame and sickly nature made it too difficult for her to mine for kemiite on her own. When their parents were still alive, Yemiri's father had done her share.
Since then, Zack had taken the mantle, toiling day in and out, burning his forearms as he struck his crude pickax against the dense ice of the tunnels. He had long since given up on being angry at the other slaves for accepting their lot. Keeping Yemiri alive in addition with his grandpa's stories were the only thing that fueled his anger to get him through the long days.
Zack didn't know how he was going to get her there, but the dream was what kept him going. The distance between the Demon's Prospect was only ten miles according to what the other slaves said. They could cover that in a few hours if he carried her, but it wasn't that simple.
The only time they could make their escape was at night. Except, the winds coming from the nearby Frozen Sea howled ten times harder than in the day. No matter how much reindeer fat your put on your face, you'd be ice before the night was done. Other slaves had tried, only to return as frozen corpses. That wasn't even counting the trollbears or snow leopards that prowled the Astorian snow.
Even if they managed to get to Bergen, he didn't know how to get on a ship to leave the Astorian shores. Yemiri had once explained that her mother told them people who weren't slaves used something called money for services. It made little sense to Zack, but it pointed out to him they were in way over their heads.
Everything about being a slave in the Demon's Prospect was designed to make escape impossible.
He just wished he wasn't so ineffective. Sure, he could act defiant in front of Rissa and Denn, but when it came to the one thing that mattered, Zack was useless. But he'd find a way. He had to. They were both seventeen, the youngest of the slaves who could actually go to the tunnels and mine. He and Yemiri couldn't spend the rest of their lives like this.
"I smell the good stuff," said a gruff voice from the entrance of their igloo.
An old man in tattered slave furs walked down the steps of the igloo. He cast them a grin full of crooked teeth. His eyes were blue like any other typical Astorian, but there was something about his demeanor that had always seemed off, like he wasn't meant to be there. He was probably older than grandpa had been before he took his final breath. The man's white hair seemed so thin like it could fall off at any moment.
Could people even get this old?
Zack got up and offered a leather sitting rug for the man. "Come, old one. Sit."
The old man had a way of appearing randomly to their igloo, asking for food. He had been doing that since his grandpa was alive. His grandpa seemed to treat the old man with respect, which Zack continued to do even after his grandpa's death. To this day, they never got his name, and so just respectfully referred to him as 'old one'.
Yemiri passed out their bowls with the reindeer meat and water-soup. They took off their gloves to eat and Yemiri prayed. "Morgoth, bless us lowly slaves with your freedom. Grant us a Tesseract to break our bonds."
Zack noticed the old man studying Yemiri as she prayed. The old one asked him, "Why don't you pray like her?"
He shrugged. "Grandpa said Morgoth isn't really a god, at least, not the way we think of one is. I don't really know what that meant, but I trust him. So, I don't want to pray like everyone else. Besides, the only thing that's reliable is your own flesh."
Zack flexed his thick forearms. He asked, "Why don't you pray?"
The old one returned the shrug. "Seems silly to do so."
"It is." Zack replied. "I mean, what's a Tesseract anyway and how is it supposed to break our bonds?"
Yemiri interjected, "Mother said the Tesseract is a symbol of hope and can be granted to anyone."
Zack snorted. "So that's it? That box thing is just a symbol?"
The old one seemed to be looking very far away when he said, "It's not a symbol. The Tesseract is a source of power. More accurately, it helps those who obtain it to realize their own power. It's the foundation of being an Elementalist. Think of it like both a key and a well."
Zack chuckled. "Did my grandpa's stories about people breathing fire or making ice golems get to you too? Those things are just legends."
The old one shook his head. "No. They are very real. In fact, they're humans with more power. That's it. Although, some of them end up forming a god complex."
Desperate to switch the subject from the ridiculous, Zack asked, "Any new gossip you'd like to share?"
The old man slurped his soup and said, "Let's see... Bergen's Adjutant is going around looking for new harem candidates. Gotta be seventeen or older. The White Emperor is implementing more slave programs across Astoria. And I'm sitting here eating a meal with my favorite little miners."
Zack munched on his food and slurped down the soup in a few gulps. He wiped his mouth and said, "You're here for food. That means you've run out. Does this mean you want me to dig for your portion of kemiite again? If so, the same deal stands. We get half your meat."
The old man snapped his fingers. "You said it, not me. But that's not what I came here for. You see, down in the tunnels, I saw the body of a fresh reindeer carcass."
Yemiri gave Zack an alarmed look. She said, "Did it fall through the ice from above?"
The old one shook his head. "Could be. But if Zack gets it right now and harvests the meat, we can have plenty of meat to last us for a long time. All I ask for is half."
Zack put his gloves back on after wiping his fingers in the leather sitting rug, which caused Yemiri to frown. Sometimes she acted too proper for a slave. He said, "No can do. If I drag a carcass back here in broad daylight, the other slaves will jump me for it. Besides, why didn't you get it yourself?"
The old looked at him incredulously. "I'm old. If you go sneak the meat in your bag, you'd have enough food for an escape. You could use the skin of the reindeer to block the winds while carrying Yemiri."
That gave Zack pause. All his life, he had envisioned taking Yemiri away from the Demon's Prospect. They could live free in a place with no snow. After a thought, he said, "That's a tempting offer, but no. Rissa and Denn are still counting the slaves' kemiite. I can't leave her alone with Denn around. Even Rissa has a hard time controlling him."
"I'll keep an eye on her," the old man assured.
Zack calculated the risks in his head. Denn was known to prowl the igloos for whatever pretty girl he could find if Rissa wasn't watching. Yemiri was by far the prettiest girl among the slaves, which made Zack nervous about leaving her alone. She was his friend.
But to have enough food and a way to keep the wind off them while they escaped... An opportunity like this wouldn't show up for a long time, if ever. It literally fell from the sky, or the ice if you were going to get technical.
The Flesh Elementalist Page 1