The Flesh Elementalist

by Outspan Foster

  The tunnels were nearly pitch black during the day, using only the wind coming from the entrance, your own experience, and the occasional light from the kemiite to guide you. He could say he forgot something in the tunnels and put the meat in this satchel once he found the reindeer. The skin would be trickier, but he could hide it under his furs. He'd have to risk freezing by taking off his furs to put the wrap the skin around him so the others wouldn't see, but it'd be worth it.

  Finally, he asked, "Where is the carcass? I want go get it before it freezes over. It'll be impossible to harvest it with this crude pick once it does."

  "The deep tunnels," the old man replied evenly.

  Yemiri gasped. Zack wasn't surprised by her reaction. Their parents had died in the deep tunnels from the nearly invincible trollbears. No one had gone there since. The trollbears still lurked there.

  She shook her head at Zack, but he had already made up his mind. He said, "Tell me which tunnel. Keep an eye on Miri. I'll be back."

  "Good," said the old one with a mischievous smile. "You'll find exactly what you've been looking for."

  2

  The tunnels of the Demon's Prospect were completely dark, but Zack still wore goggles when venturing into them. Sharp winds coming in from the entrance of the tunnel could freeze a miner's eyeballs if he faced in that direction with his eyes open for too long.

  Luckily, getting permission from Rissa to get back in the tunnels wasn't a difficult matter. He just told her he forgot something. Of course, she used that opportunity to ridicule him, saying that he might as well just live in the tunnels like a trollbear because mining was all he was good for. The insult barely glanced him, the vision of his and Yemiri's escape holding fast in his mind.

  Zack wasn't worried about Rissa so much as he was about Denn. He had watched the not-so-peaceful giant's reaction the whole time while speaking with the overseer. All he got from the man was another sneer. So, nothing new.

  In the deep tunnels, it wasn't the dark you had to worry about or the slippery ice. Both of those could be managed with experience, and after mining the ice in the tunnels day in and day out for most of his seventeen years of living, traversing the tunnels wasn't difficult so much as it was slow.

  No. Darkness and ice were the heart and soul of a slave of the Demon's Prospect.

  What the slaves really had to watch out for and the main reason they avoided the deep tunnels was because of the trollbears. The nearly invincible monsters with fast regenerative powers hibernated almost exclusively in the deep tunnels. Ironically, it was also the same place where the richest veins of kemiite were.

  Spotting kemiite was easy enough since its light cut through the thick darkness as well as the stars did at night. Getting to them was an entirely different matter. But that wasn't a problem for Zack.

  While the other slaves hammered away at the ice to get to their prize and barely make their daily quotas, Zack had learned how to cut through the ice very differently. His grandfather had taught him that when he found the pulsing blue light of the kemiite in the darkness, to study how the light refracted through the ice. At first, Zack had thought his grandpa crazy when he showed him the technique, but when he finally noticed how the light bent ever so slightly, it finally clicked.

  Instead of thousands of aimless blows against the ice, Zack struck in carefully precise ways. It saved him a considerable amount of time, time he spent doing Yemiri's and occasionally the old one's share.

  To the left here, Zack thought, feeling the tight corner of the tunnel, using the exact instructions the old man had given him. He could barely contain his excitement. The reindeer skin would help protect Yemiri while he carried her on his back. The leather that they had in they igloo was too small, even if they tied them all together with smaller leather strips.

  Soon, they'd make their escape for Bergen, get on a ship, and leave for the Farland where it had four seasons of different, distinct weather instead of two versions of Astorian snow, Tundra and the colder season, Winter. While Tundra's winds froze you over steadily, Winter's temperatures turned your blood to ice as soon as the sun was tucked behind the horizon.

  Zack was careful to keep his breathing slow and quiet. Sounds traveled quickly and unpredictably in the vast labyrinth of the deep tunnels. The last thing he wanted to attract to his position was a trollbear.

  He wasn't afraid of the thing that killed his parents and had never seen the beast in person. Enough slaves had seen one to know how dangerous they were. But the description was always the same. Giant, nearly twice as big as the seven foot tall Denn, with fur so thick that picks barely did any damage. And any cuts or injuries it did receive were never sustained. But if they received enough damage, they scarred.

  The trollbears had a notoriously quick regenerative ability. They were easy to spot since the trollbears liked to nest in large veins of kemiite, attracted to the magical pulses of light. If you saw the largest vein in your life, you went the completely other direction because a trollbear probably lived there.

  Unfortunately, Zack and Yemiri's parents had learned that lesson the hard way. So was Zack afraid of the trollbear? No. He hated the damn things. If it weren't for the fact that Yemiri's ankle hadn't healed improperly after it broke all those years ago and she relied on him to make her quotas, then Zack would have gone into the deep tunnels alone to seek his revenge.

  A few more sharp turns in the tight tunnels and Zack's leg felt a large space. That meant only one thing. He had reached the deep tunnels.

  He shuffled his frame through the tight tunnel, making sure his pick didn't scrape against the ice to not attract any sound. The first thing he saw was the reindeer. It hadn't frozen over. The tunnel was wide enough to fit ten slaves, and Zack could see the crevice the reindeer had fallen through from the few pieces of kemiite in the area.

  The old man was true to his word, and Zack had never felt more excited in his life. He promised to himself that if he ever escaped the Demon's Prospect with Yemiri and made sure he was safe, he would come back for the old one. WIthout him, this never would have been possible.

  Despite his excitement, he looked around in the wide tunnel, checking to see if there were large and bright veins of kemiite nearby. It wouldn't do to be hunched over fresh meat while next to the a trollbear's nest. Good, there weren't any.

  During his sweep, Zack's eye fell on a strange light. It wasn't the dim, pulsing blue light of kemiite he had seen countless times before. It was a small, constant white light barely visible in the dark. Strange.

  Zack had never seen anything like it before. The light was barely trapped in the ice near the dead reindeer. His experience and judgement told him it would only take a few careful and precise strikes to break the light free. After taking a moment to look at the object inside the ice, he realized it wasn't shaped like kemiite either.

  While it was the same size as the magical ore, big enough to be held firmly in a thick glove, it wasn't round. Instead, it was a many sided square. What did Yemiri call those shapes she had drawn once in the snow? Ah. Cubes.

  No. That's not a cube, Zack realized. It was a Tesseract. He didn't know why, but his heart skipped a beat at the sight of the box-shaped light.

  He shook his head, looking back at the reindeer corpse. He was only here for the meat and the skin. If he didn't harvest either fast enough, it would be too frozen for him to carry back.

  And yet, his eyes shifted back to the Tesseract's light. He sighed. I can bring it back as a gift for Yemiri, he thought. It'll be our way to celebrate our escape.

  Excitedly, Zack made a quick study of the ice above the Tesseract and struck in five different angles, perfectly. On the last strike, the ice slid off like wet furs. The Tesseract fell dimly to the snow floor. It was the smallest, strangest light he had ever seen, and he knew he had done the right thing.

  Of course, it couldn't have been the same Tesseract from his grandpa's stories. Things like that and Eementalists were completely made up, and if they were
n't, they were about as real to Zack as fancy clothes and a warm house made of stones and wood. The cube was beautiful and would make a great gift for Yemiri. All of his years of working his muscles to their limit had finally paid off.

  As he reached for it, a low growl echoed in the chamber.

  Zack's heart leaped to his throat, his gloves tightening quickly around his pick. He scanned the chamber of the deep tunnel quickly, unsure where the sound came from. It was definitely a trollbear. There was no denying that, but the sounds of the deep tunnels could carry farther than you'd think.

  He saw no thick white fur standing seven feet above him. Instead, a dark shadow covered one end of the chamber. The beast was hunched and completely silent.

  How could it move so quietly that Zack didn't notice?

  Zack stayed still. A thousand questions flashed through his mind. But above all those questions was one stark truth that showed him how completely stupid he had been.

  It wasn't just sound that carried through the tunnels, air did too. And with that air carried smell. In the sterile environment of the deep tunnels, the fresh scent of a recently dead reindeer would lead any predator with a good nose to it.

  "Dammit," Zack cursed. He should have known. Life had a funny way of kicking you in the balls as soon as you found a way to stand up on your own to feet, and that went double for slaves. There was no need to be quiet now as the trollbear stood up on all four haunches, completely filling the tunnel.

  It was only then did Zack see the white fur and massive scars across its belly. His mouth went dry, and a feral hate began to boil in him at the sight of the scars. He had always envisioned his parents going down with a fight, doing their best to kill or maim the beast. And here it was, clear pink scars across the trollbear's belly. Was it the same one that took his and Yemiri's parents' life?

  It didn't matter. The thing had to die or Zack did. There was no slowly walking away from the beast. They were both here for the same food.

  "Come on!" Zack screamed, his voice echoing through the tunnels.

  The bear launched itself at Zack, swiping its massive paws at his head. He ducked deftly, feeling the ice shatter above him from the bear's claws. The tdamn beast had broken through the ice like it was powdered snow!

  Acting on instinct alone, Zack brought up the sharp end of his pick in an upward strike, lodging it into the trollbear's elbow. The beast howled in pain, but Zack knew better.

  He had dreamed of this fight ever since the day his grandpa came to him with the news. Right now, there was no protecting Yemiri. The only thing he had to think about was his own rage.

  Zack pulled the pick from the trollbear's elbow just in time as he sidestepped away from its massive jaws, clenching at the air where he had just been. His shoulder collided the opposite wall of ice as he tripped over the reindeer corpse.

  Under the light of the nearby kemiite, he could see the wound on the monster's elbow already healing. He spat into the snow. Attacking the trollbear's body wasn't an option. He had to go for the --

  The trollbear was a blur as it smashed into Zack against the wall with its massive body. Zack was quick, but not as quick as the beast. He had barely been able to get out of the way, but a sharp, agonizing pain shooting up his left arm told him his arm had been stuck. The bones had shattered completely.

  Pushing past the pain, the gritted his teeth and screamed violently as he thrust his pick straight into the trollbear's eyes. The monster lashed backward, probably having never experienced its prey fighting back so effectively. Unfortunately, the wound around the eye was already beginning to heal.

  The bear's claws ripped straight through Zack's fur coat, and a bright, scarlet pain lashed through his ribs. He could feel his own blood leaking from his torso into the coat. Suddenly, the pain began to fade. He didn't understand exactly why it was happening, but he needed to us it. The pain was still there, the fact he was dying completely undeniable.

  But it was like his body had given him one last chance to kill the damn beast.

  His left arm was obliterated and he no longer had the energy to raise his right arm. Zack could barely stand. But past his blurry vision, he saw the bear was writhing on the snowy floor, trying to pull the pick out.

  "Oh, no you don't," Zack wheezed. "I'm tucking you in to bed before it's my turn to sleep."

  He hobbled over to the beast who was too busy addressing the instrument in its eye. Zack raised his leg, and stomped on his pick, hammering his heel in as hard as he could.

  The bear squirmed, shivered, and drew out a breath as blood squirted out a like geyser from its eyes. Zack collapsed backward, a numbing feeling taking over him.

  Not now, he thought. I can't die now. We were so close. I refuse to die here.

  His vision began to fade to black, but a single, white light broke through. The Tesseract's light called it him.

  The old man had said it was the foundation of the Elementalist's power. Maybe it could save his life. He didn't care about dying, but Zack didn't want to leave Yemiri alone. They needed to get to the Farland together.

  The Tesseract was only a few inches away. He had no strength left in him. His body told him to give up. He wanted to scream but his lungs were giving out, blood leaking from his side.

  If he didn't have the strength, he'd make it. With a reservoir of will he never thought he had, Zack clenched the ground with his remaining hand and dragged his nearly lifeless body closer to the white light. His hand shivered as he placed it on the Tesseract.

  In an instant, the dark world fell around him and he was suddenly floating in endless room made of white light. Several square shaped, blue translucent boxes appeared in front of him.

  He looked down and realized he was completely naked but wasn't cold. The Tesseract. It must have been the same one from the stories.

  "Does that mean Morgoth is real too?" Zack found himself saying.

  Zack was confused, struck by the sudden change of the world and his appearance. Yet, he still felt he was on the edge of life and death. Whatever he was doing now would probably determine which way he went.

  The blue translucent boxes hovered in front of him, blinking its strange light. White lines were scribbled on the boxes, and Zack realized they were words. He only recognized a few, one of them being his own name. The rest was jibberish.

  Yemiri had tried to teach him letters and words in writing like her mother had taught her, but he had been too impatient. He never would have imagined learning the stuff would actually come in handy. Shaking his head, he said, "Once again, Miri was right. Wait till she founds out about this."

  Not knowing what to do, he drew on the memories of what he knew about the Tesseract.

  They were objects of legends. To Yemiri and her family, they were a symbol of hope. To his grandpa, the Tesseracts were things of power. To the old man, they were the foundations of Elementalists.

  What did that mean?

  Elementalists were supposed to be able to absorb and wield a single element like water or air or lightning. Was that what the boxes were trying to say, to give him a message to choose which element he wanted?

  Ice and snow were the most obvious answer. There was plenty of that in Astoria. With that element, he could freeze Rissa and Denn in a block of ice. Zack even imagined walking across the second half of the Frozen Sea by freezing the waters with his ice powers.

  "No," he muttered. "I'll probably have these powers for life. If I manage to take Yemiri to the Farland, who knows how much snow will be there. My powers might be useless. And besides, I'm dying. Even if I gained these powers, it wouldn't guarantee me to not bleed out."

  He could freeze his wounds together. Of course, he could die from exposure to the cold, but if he were an ice Elementalist, it'd stand to reason he'd be immune to ice, right?