The Elementalists

Chapter 12

Kass

It's pissing it down as we trudge through the forest. Lifeless trunks cast us all into shadow as we splash over their withered roots towards the wormhole. I keep to myself, hood pulled low. Nobody speaks; the tension yesterday evening was so thick, so solid, that hell, I probably could've smashed it. It didn't break by morning; in fact, it's only grown worse.

So none of us are in the mood to chat. Well. Except Eldred, of course.

'Come now, Sammi,' he chirps, swishing his raincoat from side to side. 'Chin up, eh? I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he didn't come back.'

'Go away.' Footsteps squelch through the mud behind me, then Sammi appears by my side, her jaw rigid as she clenches her teeth. I glance sideways at her as she falls into step. At her bloodshot, downcast eyes.

Eldred sighs, but doesn't try to bother us again. Instead, his steps slow; I guess he's moving on to bug Rai now instead. The weird Futurist has been hovering behind us all morning, looking awkward and freakishly out of place.

'Is she okay?' Rai says in a hushed voice to Eldred. He thinks he's so subtle, but he can't whisper for shit. Idiot. His voice is carried on the wind.

'The heart wants what the heart wants, and lets nothing distract or dissuade it,' Eldred replies sadly. 'She'll be fine in a little while, I'm sure.'

I open my mouth to argue but on second thoughts, close it again. It's pointless trying to argue with Eldred, like pinning down the mist. Too much effort for too little gain.

We'd spent the whole evening locked up in Cotton's office with Colonel Văn. Our first mission would be taking place in South Amariland, in Coral Bay—where we need to destroy the first capsule. The Alpha-Capsule.

'The Lurrera tectonic plate, as shown here—' Văn projected a hologram of the world up from Cotton's brand-new office table, and zoomed in on Amariland's eastern coastline, '—moves directly into the Amarish plate and is slowly being forced underneath. This subduction causes friction to build up at areas known as hotspots, ultimately being released in a huge burst of energy. An earthquake,' he clarified.

'Now, the Alpha-Cap is connected via special cables to hundreds of different hotspots. We suspect the cables are also made from visinium but obviously we can't be sure. Hotspots for the Alpha-Cap are found along the Amarish eastern border all the way across the sea to west Caeltanica. When the capsule is activated, energy is released that causes a chain reaction, triggering the hotspots, and subsequently, earthquakes.'

Văn zoomed even further in, pointing to a spot directly off the coastline. 'Your job is to travel to Coral Bay, where we believe the capsule is buried in the ocean floor. One of our men will meet you there, and with his assistance, you need to destroy the alpha-cap.'

He made it sound so easy, I grumble to myself as I splatter through the mud. But he isn't the one who has to march into 'an active earthquake zone with high probability of tsunamis.'

Yeah. Thanks a lot, Văn.

'You just have to calm the weather; it's what you lot do, right?' The way he spoke. It was so clinical. Like we were just tools at his disposal. 'Then you should be able to use your powers to deactivate or destroy the capsule, but obviously, we haven't been able to test how. You're the only ones, in theory, able to do it. We assume it will require some sort of physical contact—Keller has a theory.'

'Yes,' Keller said, wringing his hands together—the man could hardly contain his excitement. 'My guess is that there must be a chemical link, or at least, a similarity, between yourselves and the capsules. We know visinium allows capsules to alter their environment, which really isn't so different to what you do. You disrupt and manipulate the bonds between chemical structures, sometimes even the atoms themselves. Perhaps that's all you need to do to the visinium; touch it, and manipulate it in the same way you would the wind, Sammi, or the ground, Kass.'