Chapter 16 : EARTH ELEMENTAL TERRITORY
The highlands were wrong in a way the territory sense had been insisting on for three weeks.
Aldric crouched behind a granite outcropping, watching the stone formations that had triggered his awareness from twenty miles distant. The northeast highlands rose above the barony's fertile lowlands in jagged steps—difficult terrain, rarely traveled, home to nothing more threatening than wild goats and the occasional nest of harpies that the soldiers cleared annually.
But something heavy lived here now. Something that registered in his extended awareness as geological-wrong, a weight that had no organic explanation.
"The scouts reported unusual formations ahead," Edvard said quietly, settling beside him. The veteran's eyes moved across the terrain with the systematic attention of someone who had learned to read landscapes for ambush potential. "Stone that doesn't match the surrounding geology. And one dead specimen."
"Dead?"
"Partially sunk into the rock. Dormant for years, by the weathering." Edvard gestured toward the northeast ridge. "Three hundred meters past the second outcropping. They didn't approach closer."
Aldric closed his eyes and let the territory sense expand. The sensation was clearer now than it had been during those first weeks—the day he'd found the old culvert system felt like a lifetime ago, though it had been barely fourteen months. The highlands mapped themselves in his awareness: stone composition, water table depth, the particular density of granite versus sandstone.
And there—a concentration of mass that shouldn't exist. Two of them.
Two. The Architect's Knowledge had specified Earth Elemental bones for the Campus Invictus foundation, but he'd estimated a single specimen based on typical elemental territorial behavior. The games had suggested they were solitary creatures.
The games had been wrong before.
"We move forward," he said. "Observation only. Stay above the treeline—if there's an active specimen, I want high ground."
---
[Highland Survey Area — Three Hours Later]
The dead elemental was exactly as the scouts had described.
It lay half-submerged in a granite shelf, its form still recognizable despite years of weathering: roughly humanoid, perhaps three meters tall, composed of interlocking stone plates that had once articulated into something capable of movement. Now it was just rock returning to rock, the animating force long departed.
"Not what you need," Edvard observed.
"No." The Architect's Knowledge required fresh material—bones from an elemental killed within days, before the magical resonance faded. This corpse was useless for construction purposes, though it confirmed the territory as elemental habitat.
Aldric moved past the dead specimen, scanning the ridgeline ahead. The territory sense pulsed with warning—not danger, exactly, but presence. Something was moving through the stone ahead, following patterns that registered as weight-shifting-through-earth rather than the ordinary physics of living creatures.
"Hold position," he said. "Watch the northern slope."
The elemental emerged from what had looked like solid rock.
It flowed upward through the granite like a whale breaching water, stone plates articulating with grinding precision into a form that dwarfed the dead specimen. Four meters tall, at least. Its limbs were columns of interlocked rock, and its head—if the mass at the top could be called a head—swiveled toward their position with the inexorable attention of something that had all the time in the world.
Then it began to patrol.
Fifty meters. The circuit was exactly fifty meters, traced in a rough oval around a section of highland that contained nothing Aldric could identify as significant. The elemental moved with mechanical precision, each step shaking the ground with a vibration he could feel through his boots.
"That's the active specimen," Toma said, his voice carefully controlled. "One of them."
"One of them," Aldric confirmed. The territory sense registered the second presence now—another concentration of mass, perhaps two hundred meters east, following its own circuit through terrain that overlapped the first's range.
Two elementals. Home territory. Stone ground that gives them material advantage.
Edvard was watching him with the particular attention of someone waiting to hear a plan. The veteran had been with him during the rotfiend hunt—had watched him freeze for three seconds before the training kicked in, had covered the gap without comment. He knew what Aldric was capable of, and what he wasn't.
"We're going to need better equipment," Edvard said.
"Two of them," Aldric replied. "The Architect's Knowledge is specific. Two complete skeletal structures."
"That complicates things."
Vek picked up a stone from the patrol path—a fragment that had been displaced by the elemental's passage. His face shifted as the weight registered, dense as lead in his palm. He set it down carefully.
"Six weeks," Aldric said. "We return in six weeks with equipment and a plan."
---
[Highland Ridge — Evening]
The ride back gave him time to think.
Aldric mapped the patrol circuits from memory, overlaying them against the territorial patterns the games had established for Earth Elemental behavior. The creatures were territorial but not aggressive—they wouldn't pursue beyond their designated range. That was an advantage. They were also vulnerable to specific attack angles, if you could get close enough to exploit them without being crushed.
Dimeritium bombs, some part of his lore knowledge suggested. Disrupt their animating force. Standard Witcher approach.
But he didn't have Witcher equipment. He didn't have access to dimeritium in quantities that would matter. What he had was thirteen soldiers, a forge that could produce exceptional weapons, and whatever tactical advantages the terrain might offer.
Research the vulnerabilities, he reminded himself. Then plan the engagement. Then execute.
The dread sense pulsed behind his sternum—not alarm, just the steady pressure that had been his companion for fifteen months. Seven hundred and eighty-five days until the Fall of Cintra. The Campus Invictus was the second of four buildings, and he hadn't even secured the materials yet.
"You're quiet, my lord," Edvard said, falling into step beside his horse.
"I'm calculating."
"Calculating what?"
"How to kill two creatures made of living stone, in their home territory, without losing anyone in the process." Aldric glanced at the veteran. "Any suggestions?"
Edvard considered the question with the seriousness it deserved. "Separate them. Fight one, then the other. The terrain makes that difficult, but the patrol circuits suggest they don't coordinate—they're solitary even when their ranges overlap."
"How do you separate them?"
"Bait one away from the overlap zone. Something that triggers territorial response but doesn't draw the second." He paused. "Or fight at the boundary edge, where only one can engage at a time."
Aldric filed the tactical framework. It was sound—better than anything he'd generated from pure lore knowledge. This was why Edvard was worth his salary: practical experience that no amount of wiki articles could replace.
"Six weeks," he said. "In six weeks, we'll have a plan."
He spent the rest of the ride writing out everything he could remember about Earth Elemental vulnerabilities, knowing that some of it would be wrong in ways he hadn't discovered yet.
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