Gwendith, Heron, and Saki made their careful way across the volcanic terrain. Well, it wasn't that bad yet, but steam hissed out of holes in the ground every so often. Heat was more than prevalent in the surroundings, accompanied by Fire elemental energies. Gwendith pulled the heat surrounding her, and focused it on one hand.
A curious effect of her Ennoia was that as she gathered heat, it produced two opposing elemental energies, Fire and Ice. Or perhaps Cold? It varied and shifted, and she could manipulate and draw upon both anyway. Her control over the elemental energies were rudimentary at the beginning, but practicing Arcana Weaving had actually honed her skills. She could use the elemental energies to fuel spells, or she could freely manipulate or shape them. Not to the extent that Yuriko could with Chaos, but close enough. And, she could feed either energies into her Ennoia core to convert it to Animus. The conversion rate was atrocious, but it was twice as efficient than just using her Ennoia energies.
On her right hand was a ball of condensed Fire elemental energy while on her left was an orb of condensed Cold. Around her, the winds carried Heat cycling between the two orbs and slowly increased both in potency. It would take a while to grow to a point where she would lose control, it was the most potent weapon she could use now, though she was clumsy with it. Well, the only thing she could do was to throw the Fire Orb at an enemy, have it explode, then grab all the heat produced, then toss the Cold Orb. After an explosion, her target would be encompassed with a wave of freezing cold, which then drove Heat away, so that she could siphon right back into the Fire Orb. It should be an endless cycle and fire and frost, but as with anything, it was limited by a resource, her Intent.
Well, she doubted the Fire Orb would be useful against the Ashen Elementals, but she was using it to keep the Cold Orb active and without expending Animus to do so.
When they crossed the ravine, and came within sight of the gaggle of Ashen Elementals, Heron gave her the signal and she flung the Cold Orb at them. The gully was roughly fifty paces wide, and there were half a dozen Ashen Elementals there. The Cold Orb landed in their midst and exploded into a white cloud.
Hsss!
The cold mist sizzled against the fiery hot elementals, which further obscured the battlefield. It wasn't a problem for Gwendith since she could see the outlines of the elementals heat forms, but Heron grumbled as he waded into the fight.
"Sure, make things harder for me…"
"Sorry!"
Gwendith stuck her tongue out when he had his back turned to her. The mists had a spike of heat and she grasped it with her Anima and pulled it into her Fire Orb, which she made sure was completely compressed.
Saki dashed into the cloud, Shadows clinging to her body. Her weapons of choice were daggers, but against these enemies, those were woefully inadequate. Instead, she attached three pace long tendrils of solidified Shadow energy onto her dagger blade using a spell.
Heron stabbed the nearest Ashen Elemental and managed to strike the core and managed to dislodge it. It was still within the elemental's cloudy form, but it stunned the creature long enough for another blow to destroy the core. Only the inner part of the thing was required to trade in for merits, otherwise it would be impossible to kill the things, at least physically.
Saki whipped an elemental a dozen times, and each strike leeched heat from it. The creature's heat signature slowly dimmed until it was no warmer than the surrounding air. At that point, the Ashen Elemental dissolved.
For her part, Gwendith simply drained the heat out of the remaining elementals. They didn't die from that, but grew increasingly sluggish. In almost no time, all of them were dead, and Saki collected the elemental cores scattered on the ground. Those that Heron killed were, more often than not, shattered completely, while the ones Saki took care of were pristine.
Both women stared at Heron and Gwendith said, "Don't kill any more."
Heron sighed and threw his hands up in the air, "Fine!"
They hunted down more Ashen Elementals, and they were more often found in cul-de-sacs, ravines, and gullies that had steam vents active. Closer to the evening, Saki reported that she found hot springs in a grove.
"You want a bath?" Heron raised an eyebrow.
"If it's available." Gwendith shrugged.
"The water might be too hot," Saki said.
"It's a good place to camp out in, anyway," Gwendith said.
The mountainside was dotted with many such groves, though most of the trees were mishapen and barren. These ones looked the hardy sort, but they were barely taller than three paces. A simple watch rotation was set after dinner, and the night passed uneventfully.
The next day, they continued to hunt. They needed at least a hundred elemental cores for the exit pass, and another hundred for each droplet of Ambrosia. It might be easier to look for it in other Chaos Founts, but it was already here in front of them, so they might as well. Yesterday, they gatehred thirty cores, a veritable treasure. Hopefully, they'd find a lot more.
Over the next week, they managed nearly three hundred cores, more than enough to leave and bring a couple drops of Ambrosia with them. But the number of Ashen Elementals did not seem to dwindle even as they culled them. In fact, the number in each nook increased to at least two dozen.
But if numbers were all they encountered, that would have been no problem at all. At least, Gwendith would have preferred fighting only Ashen Elementals since the things were rather easy to kill once they knew the trick, and had a good chance of having an intact core once they were done with it. No, she would have been fine if they fought off a hundred of them.
Instead, one afternoon as they were moving to the next set of Ashen Elementals, a geyser suddenly erupted at their flanks. The steaming water took her attention for a while, but she was startled to realise that a huge source of heat was swimming up from the ground, right under Heron.
"Watch out below!" she yelled, and he moved even before her shout dissipated. Just in time as a fountain of lava erupted from underneath. Gwendith reflexively pulled at the heat, and the orange glow of the molten rock dimmed to red, but only for a moment. Another Will seized the heat she had grasped and yanked it out of her control. She was so startled that she hadn't fought back.
A moment later, a hulking figure, something that was half as tall as Heron and the size of a Wanderer, emerged from the ground, made out of the same molten lava. Another elemental, of course.
With a wordless hum, it swiped its arms at Heron, who deflected it with a shield of solidified air. The arm expanded longer than the elemental was tall, and looped around the edges of his shield. But by that point, Gwendith had recovered her aplomb. She tossed her Cold Orb at the lava monster and as it exploded over its skin, the orange tinge dimmed to red, then to obsidian.
She heaved a sigh of relief, only to shriek when she realised it was premature. The monster struck out towards her, and Saki pulled her out of danger using her Shadow whip. Again, the monster grasped at the surrounding heat and pushed it into its body. Its movements were somewhat stiff now, which was how it was unable to react when Heron slammed an Anima-reinforced spear against its middle. The reddening obsidian skin cracked and chipped, and a second infused strike shattered its side, and carved halfway through its body.
Its blank face opened up, into a maw gleaming with fire. A beam of pure heat slammed against Heron's side, and he yelled in pain. His Anima fractured and heated up, and the flames licked at his clothes. Gwendith threw her Fire Orb above the creature's heat, and directed all of the heat she could to it. She even pushed at the monster's grasp, and managed to nudge its control until the heat went up to her orb instead of its body.
Saki's Shadow whip snapped at the body, slowly leeching its vital force away. Frost began to form around the creature's obsidian skin as Gwendith wrenched the Heat from its core and towards her orb. Heron recovered from the hit then continued to slam his spearshaft against the thing. Again, and again, and again.
The frost made the elemental brittle, and the application of brute strength slowly shattered it to bits. The elemental's control over the heat weakened over time, and soon enough, it was nothing more than a pile of fragmented stone.
"You alright?" Gwendith asked Heron, who grimaced and beat the flames off his coat.
"I'm fine," he grunted, but she recognised his stoic expression as a mask. Still, he gestured at the shards.
Gwendith and Saki dug into it, only to find nothing but stones. No core.
"Bad luck," she muttered.
They paused to rest and for Heron to activate his Recovery technique. It took the rest of the day and most of the evening before he was back in shape, and they continued their hunt. Unfortunately, the lava elementals they defeated never had an intact core, and they grew more numerous the longer they stayed in the region, and the closer they got to the crater. And so, after that week, as they started their day of hunting, she brought up the issue.
"Think we should retreat?" Gwendith asked. "We've more than reached our goal."
Heron nodded. "We could, but…" He hesitated. "I'm curious about the prizes more expensive than the Ambrosia. And don't forget, Pure Life Essence might not be what we think it is."
"So you're saying?" Gwendith pressed.
"We might as well go for the top prize. There's more than enough elementals here."
"That'll take more weeks."
"We've been gone this long," Heron muttered.
"Yeah. I miss her, too."
Heron rolled his eyes. "You just want to do vile things to her."
"The same thing you wanna do." Gwendith smirked.
Saki emerged from hiding a moment later with a puzzled look.
"What is it?" Gwendith asked.
"I saw people fighting Elementals."
"Ah, so others thought to do what we're doing," Heron said. The volcanic region was wide enough that thousands of adventurers would be able to fight to their heart's content without running into each other.
Gwendith wondered about the Fount's size, actually. It was much larger than the Hillside Burrows, though that was only true after they entered the city. Before they reached the walls, the space had felt far more constricted. Now, she actually couldn't see the borders.
Chaos Founts were more complicated than she expected, and she realised that the ones they encountered on their trip to Nirlith City had been small ones indeed.
"They aren't people I recognised," Saki explained. "They weren't wearing Ishodirian or Xothan attire."
"Adventurers then." Gwendith shrugged. "There's no reason to bother."
"No, I think you might want to look at these people," Saki insisted. "I'm not sure what I saw."
"What do you expect we'd see?" Heron asked.
Saki shook her head, "Better you see for yourself and judge. I'm not sure, and I don't want to prejudice you."
"Well, lead on."
They crossed a couple of ravines and went up and over a ridge. The sounds of fighting, energetic shouts, and impacts, were audible even before they climbed the ridge. And when Gwendith peeked over, it was to the sight of a group of five clashing against thrice their number in Ashen Elementals.
That wasn't what surprised her though. It was the fact that the five were surrounded by the unmistakable corona of condensed Anima.