"Wow. You really mastered the secrets of the Rainbow material."
Salamander was in awe as she turned and flipped Papi's latest creation. The young dragonkin smith had crafted a rapier that was barely thicker than a hair, and yet had the resistance of a mountain. The fire spirit needed a lot of effort to bend the blade, and even then, she could feel the resistance of the material.
"Thank you! I want to be the best smith on the world!"
Salamander smiled warmly. "Well, the title more-or-less belongs to Randolph, since he's the only one who managed to learn to craft materials from Meteorite ore, but we don't know where is he…" She patted her junior on the back. "Either way, you made a lot of progress. If you keep up that attitude, I have no doubt that you will manage to learn how to craft the rarest of material in no time!"
"Huuuuurgh, I'm soooo bored."
That bonding moment between the fire spirit and the young smith was broken by the unexpected arrival of Sylph. The wind spirit was looking sad, her shoulders slumped and her movements erratic. Salamander sighed as the small fairy certainly didn't end up here by coincidence. She smiled one last time at Papi, and stepped toward her fellow spirit.
"Are you alright Sylph? You look like you just went through a washing makina."
"That's because I'm sooooo booooored! Master Luka has been going on adventures without me for weeks now!"
Salamander sighed. It was one of the issue they had to accept when they all chose to join Luka. The hero was only taking a small team to accompany him, while the number of people following him had kept growing to become an army. As such, the four spirits weren't always on the road, an even more rarely all together at the same time.
Not that it missed her that much…
"Don't you have fellow fairies who want to play pranks?"
"The elves are torturing theeeeem..."
"That's called educating and learning discipline. Something that I noticed is curiously lacking in the smallest residents of the forest."
"You're meaaaaan…"
"I had a little talk with Freya and Airy where they told me about the damages dealt by your friends, and I can understand they're exhausted to deal with them."
"But what am I supposed to do in the meantime…" Sylph suddenly looked up, a smile that didn't reassure the fire spirit in the slightest on her face. "Oh, I know! Why don't we travel all four together! It's been so long since we did anything!"
"That's not exactly the best time…" Salamander closed her eyes. "Luka is busy and could need us anytime, Mephisto would also appreciate a few extra hands for her work, and I'm not confident with all the murderers roaming around… Besides, we all have some work. I'm training several warriors, Undine is working with the Grand Noah queen to solve the pollution issues, and Gnome is helping maintain the pyramid..."
Sylph looked at Salamander with watery eyes. In front of her child like innocence, Salamander relented
"All right, I'll see what I can do."
"Yay!"
"But no promises!"
It had taken her the better of a day, but Salamander had managed to convince Gnome and Undine to go on a small adventure together. They encountered a first obstacle when they had to agree commonly on a destination.
"What do you have against the Northern Sea, you shameless lizard?"
"It's cold and it's under water! You're the only one who can breathe in the ocean!"
"Actually I can create myself a bubble of air to surround me and not drown!"
Salamander glared at Sylph. "And Gnome? You're okay with that?"
Gnome shook her head negatively.
"Then if you're so smart, maybe you can choose a better destination yourself!"
Salamander looked at the large map that was laying in front of them for a minute while scratching her chin with a hand, lost in thoughts. She then enthusiastically pointed at a place on the map.
"There!"
Undine frowned as she identified the place Salamander wanted to spend time in.
"The Lava Mines? Really?"
"What? Do you have a problem with that?"
The water spirit raised an eyebrow. "It is burning hot and filled with lava. I see no reason to visit this place ever."
"The formations of orichalcum are a sight to behold!" Gnome nodded in approval.
A dramatic sigh echoed through the castle. "How course it would be about seeing something that's related to weapons. What a materialistic barbarian."
"Why you-"
"Also did you consider that Sylph first and foremost wanted a place to stretch her wings?"
Sylph nodded timidly. Salamander relented. She shouldn't make others pay for her rivalry with Undine.
"Alright, fine. Do you have any idea Sylph?"
"Of course! I want to go there!"
"Fairy's Island? Aren't you tired of the greenery?" Salamander sounded genuinely curious.
"I'll never get tired of forests! And also, that place is filled to the brim with a lot of powerful fairies I never played with! I can only imagine what pranks we'll be able to do with them."
Salamander and Undine looked at each other while Gnome shivered in fear. Both had came to the same terrifying conclusion as to whom would be the recipients of said jokes. The three spirits were already seeing themselves run away, chased away by an army of fairies that they would never be able to hide from while being bombarded with explosive chestnuts, drowned in flash floods or buried alived while getting traumatized by the cackling laughter of their unfortunate gaming companions.
"Mmh." Salamander pretended to think out the situation. "You know, that doesn't sound like a bad idea, but I'm afraid I will burn the island." She failed to not sound utterly terrified.
"Don't worry, we fairies have all the powers over nature! We'll be able to stop any fire you start!"
Salamander looked at Undine in desperation. As much as the two spirits often butted head, both of them had agreed that they had to support each other when it came to balance Sylph's more whimsical ideas.
"I'm a bit afraid I would be mixed with a puddle of water once there. I have a tendency to mix myself with water to relax, and I accidentally got almost drank more than once by a beast.
"I will tell my friends to be careful!"
Salamander refrained to tell her that she believed it would be as effective as throwing a pebble into the sea.
Then Gnome started gesturing around in a panic. She gestured towards her then towards Sylph repeatedly, and distanced herself further and further each time.
"Aww, are you afraid I will spend so much times with my new friends that I will leave you alone?"
Gnome nodded repeatedly.
"Don't worry Gnomey… But maybe you also wanted to go somewhere else yourself?"
The two other spirits sighed in relief.
Gnome pointed on a zone located on the southern part of the map. The other spirits were surprised their fellow wanted to visit Ilias Continent, but they eventually looked closer.
"Lemuse Beach?" Undine tried remembering the characteristics of the place. "It's isolated by the Lost Woods, it's a good place to rest…"
"There's enough place to run around…"
"And there's a forest with friends not too far!"
Salamander smiled happily as they had managed to find a good compromise. "Well, in that case, let us go to Lemuse beach!"
Undine crossed her arms under her chest. "Since when are you the one leading?"
"This is why you're never leading."
The Four Spirits were travelling through the Lost Woods for several hours now. Undine was starting to lose patience after a few of Sylph's pranks got them lost several times, and the situation only got worsened by Salamander's stubbornness and refusal to acknowledge that they were running in circle.
"Oh, do you have any better idea about where the beach is?"
"I could be able to tell you precisely where the closest sea is if you hadn't shouted upon those fairies. They completely scrambled the ambient elements with their spells and I can't see anything further than my eyes can."
"They threw a flash flood at me! I only wanted to try teaching them a few lessons about respecting their elders!"
"And that worked well. They threw three more and left."
Salamander sighed in frustration. Undine had a point on this one, she could definitively not teach anything to those pesky fairies.
"Great. So does anybody have an idea where Lemuse Beach actually is?"
"Well, if I search for the winds the most saturated by seawater, it's a bit further down here!" Sylph pointed at the right of where the group had been walking for the past hour.
The fire spirit was dumbfounded. "Why didn't you tell us?!"
"Because you never asked me before!" Sylph sounded genuinely proud.
For the shortest momentSalamander felt the flames of anger rise within her before feeling doused by the fridge logic behind Sylph's words. She, indeed, hadn't taken a single second to ask herself how she could orient herself and if someone else had more skills to navigate the forest itself. She could only blame herself on this one.
"You're right. Then lead us to the beach, please." She sounded deeply tired.
It didn't even take a quarter an hour to see the exit the forest, with an additional thirty minutes to finally reach the beach. As soon as they reached the sea, Salamander collapsed in exhaustion as the sound of waves reached her ears.
Salamander re-opened her eyes what felt like an eternity later. She could see Undine floating in the sea, while Gnome and Sylph were digging up holes after holes into the sand. She decided to stand up to train a little, and assumed a fighting stance. She started slashing in the air with the edge of her hand once, then twice. After a few minutes, she started chaining her moves into flowing attacks.
The fire spirit appreciated this moment of tranquility. As much as she loved teaching and tutoring the more motivated monsters, those had started taking a little too much of her own time, and she consequently couldn't train as much as she used to. She enjoyed seeing people exploit their potential, but she was sometimes afraid that the spirit of fighting inside her would end up extinguished if she kept like that. Maybe she should ask Luka to take her on his adventures more often, or maybe she should travel the world on her own from time to time…
She suddenly felt observed, and saw Undine looking at her as the water spirit slithered out of the water.
"Do you ever do something beyond training yourself or training people to fight?"
"No. You got a problem with that?" Salamander frowned in anger. Her fellow spirit already started to grate her nerves.
"You could maybe take a minute to appreciate what the world has to offer rather than rush through it to look for a fight." The water spirit sighed. "I'm pretty sure that trait of your rubbed off on some of your entourage…"
"What do you mean by that?!"
Undine sighed. "That I remember some people dying when they had bitten bigger than they could chew, which would have been avoided if they had taken one minute to think it out reasonably rather than if they did act on impulse."
"Are you implying I'm the one responsible for Heinrich's death?!" Salamander's flame roared stronger. "Not Ilias for playing games on him, not the angels who sealed him, not even Black Alice for starting the mess in the first place, but ME?"
Undine rose her hands defensively. "No, I only mean that searching for any occasion or motive to jump into fights headfirst can only lead to pain. You're the one who brought Heinrich's death into our conversation."
"Well Heinrich had chosen to fight rather than to let that go!"
"Because that paid well… As it does right now." Undine turned her back and silently moved away.
Salamander's fire instantly died down when she realized what Undine meant. There was a line between having a passionate spirit for fighting and just lashing out. It was a lesson she regularly repeated to any and all of her students, and yet she all too often fell herself for it.
As she started sulking, the Fire Spirit slowly wandered around. She looked at Gnome and Sylph, thinking about how those two were living free of worries, having let go of their conflicting nature a long time ago. A part of her envied their ability to live carefree, happy in their own little world. The duo stopped digging and looked at the bottom of the hole. Did they find something? As if on cue, Gnome closed her eyes and stomped her feet repeatedly, shaking sand in waves around the hole. Gradually, a rectangular metallic chest as large as the small Earth Spirit appeared. Upon seeing the Fire Spirit, Sylph enthusiastically rushed at her like an over enthusiastic child.
"Look Mandy, we found a treasure!" The Wind Spirit was actually groping her, but the Fire Spirit found her behavior more endearing than really annoying for the moment. She looked at the chest, and noticed an apparent lack of rust on it. When she further examined it, she realized it wasn't just iron, but actually meteorite. She shivered upon seeing it. Who could afford something like that and why? What was there in the chest that made spending the value of a small town worth it? She started to doubt she wanted to learn it. She hoped Undine would actually come back soon, as her more analytical nature coupled with her magic mastery would definitively be welcome right now.
"What have we here?"
Fortunately, the Water Spirit was back. She didn't spare a glance for Salamander as she slithered toward the chest with a critical eye.
"It's not magical." She closed her eyes and passed some of her slime through the lock. "But it's been fully waterproofed and protected against magic." She pulled her slime back from the lock. "It's old. It's very old."
"I want to know what's in! It will be mine! I want it!"
Undine sighed, but decided to humor the small spirit anyway. As soon as she started working on the lock, Salamander assumed a fighting stance behind her. The water spirit couldn't blame her this time, and even the usually unexpressive Gnome had shuffled backward ever so slightly, clearly wary of whatever the chest could contain.
After spending half an hour fiddling around, she finally heard a small click. She checked for additional traps, and couldn't see anything dangerous. In fact, the chest in itself only contained a parchment and a red brick at the bottom.
"Yay!" Sylph snatched both before Salamander could do anything, but instantly found herself stuck in a bubble of water by Undine, resulting in her new possessions falling on the sand. Gnome examined the brick with a confused look on her face.
"What a joke." Salamander frowned as she looked at what the Earth Spirit was holding. As soon as Sylph got released from Undine's bubble, she rushed to the Fire Spirit's side.
"Is that a brick joke?"
The next second, Sylph was set on fire.
"Still…" Salamander's eyes narrowed as she looked at the brick. "I've never seen a material like that. Do you know what it is Gnome?"
Gnome pointed at the ground and made a negative sign with her hand.
"It's not mineral?"
Gnome shook her head negatively. She then took the parchment and showed it to the other three spirits.
"Conservation enchantments do wonders… I can't say how old it is." Undine sounded unimpressed as she mentally read it. "It's an instruction manual on how to activate the brick. Aaaaand it is not précised to do what, of course."
"I want to know, I want to do it!"
Before they could react, Sylph snatched the parchment with the break and started looking at it. All the three other spirits looked at each other awkwardly.
"Should we warn anyone about the likely impending disaster?"
Salamander shrugged. "It might be an occasion to teach something to Sylph."
While Sylph followed the instruction written on the parchment with the support of Gnome, Undine and Salamander examined the chest. Upon feeling the inside with her slime, Undine notices a few irregularities in the otherwise perfectly flat surface. She shared this information with Salamander who came to the same conclusion.
"There's a hidden compartment in the chest."
Undine suddenly lost her cool and started to look for a way to open it. Both spirits were expecting the worst. Salamander gave up and decided to try to stop whatever Sylph could be doing.
"Wait! That thing might be trouble!" Her worries only grew as Sylph appeared empty handed. Where is it?"
"It's in the ocean!" Sylph pointed to a point that was bubbling. "It only needs sea water to wake up!"
"Wake up? It's someone?"
As if on cue, a huge monstrosity revealed itself in a deafening cry as waves splashed on the coast. The monster looked like an extremely huge Scylla, one as tall as a skyscraper, with wings on her back and tentacles in front of her mouth. Her eyes were filled with a mad anger. Salamander looked shocked for a second
"She's definitively not friendly."
"Oh, what makes you think that?!"