"So, Mother, do you have a good plan to deal with that Guardian?" Lia asked me as we were sitting down together, going over the things we had seen throughout the day. Or night, in Lia's case. At the same time, Luna and I were eating dinner, and I would give Lia a drink of blood, topping off her reserves. Sasha and Silva were nearby, eating their own food and listening in. However, the differences in language and in habitual planning meant they didn't really join in the conversation, unless they had something important to convey.

"A good plan?" I couldn't help but snort, "No, I don't have a good plan. A few ideas that might work, if we are lucky, but nothing I consider good. Not even close," I admitted, a touch of annoyance creeping into my voice as I spoke. The thing was a horrible match-up for me, though it might simply be a tremendously powerful foe in general, simply because it was so incredibly durable and resilient. Sure, it had obvious weaknesses, its slow speed chief amongst them, but taking advantage of that weakness was an entirely different question. Unless a group had a very well-fitting counter, I doubted anyone would have a good time against it.

"I might have something," Luna admitted, her tone slightly hesitant, showing just how little confidence she had in her idea. That alone made me curious, and there might be ways to increase her confidence and our chances of success at the same time, so I nodded, an encouraging smile on my face.

"You see, I started to think what can break earth and rock and came away with two ideas," she began, her voice gaining confidence as she spoke, "One was to use water, to try and lure the guardian into a valley, especially a narrow one, after preparing a large reservoir of water above said valley. Then, once it's inside, we can do our best to trap it within while unleashing the water. If we use enough water, the guardian has no chance but to be swept away," she explained, making me nod in agreement.

It was a plausible plan, though one with numerous troublesome aspects, especially when it came to the proposed trap. There was no guarantee that the guardian could be lured or that it wouldn't just burrow into the walls of her proposed valley, hiding underground until the water finished rushing past. Additionally, we might be able to increase the damage by adding some projectiles to the water. We might be able to use rocks and hope that the rushing water interfered with the guardian's control, or use wood, sacrificing some impact power for an elemental advantage. Or maybe we could use both, if we went down that road. But my daughter wasn't finished speaking, and she had mentioned two ideas.

"The other idea is a little more vague, and it needs your help, Mom. You see, plants always burrow their roots into soil and around rocks, right? What if we manage to make a seedling that feeds on Ice and uses it to fuel its growth, so it burrows through the guardian, feeding on the Ice the thing uses in its form? Shouldn't that destroy the guardian fairly quickly, or at least greatly weaken its form?" she asked, making me think for a moment.

The idea was quite interesting and fairly in line with a few of our past experiments. We had managed to give plants and a few animals an innate elemental bias during some of our past experiments. This would, in many ways, be a natural expansion of that idea, especially if we managed to tie in some of Lia's vampiric nature, as her entire schtick was to feed on Astral Power.

"How would we direct that? And keep it from spreading, there's a lot more Ice Astral Power in these mountains than what the guardian controls," I asked, curious if she had answers to those questions.

"Directing it is the easy part; we just change the seeds and throw them. They make contact with the guardian and start sprouting on it, no need to control or direct them," she explained, answering the easier of my questions.

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"But I'm not sure how to stop the spread. We might be able to limit the maximum amount of power the plants can take in. We'd have to guess how much power the guardian has, and how much of that power is Ice, but if we err on the side of caution, that shouldn't be a problem. The plants might devour some of the glacier if our estimates are wrong but I don't think we could be wrong enough to cause serious trouble to these mountains," Luna continued, the idea starting to sound more and more like a workable plan.

Or at least more of a plan than anything I had managed to come up with.

"The idea of using a plant sounds fairly usable, though I have no idea how we get it to grow by devouring Ice. You know as well as I do that Ice is one of the worst elements when it comes to supporting Life in any way, shape or form," I reminded her, curious if she had an idea how to deal with that problem. Ice was, by and large, an element of extreme death; the only cyclical part it had was when it came to melting into water, thus effectively changing itself.

"Not really, no," she admitted, "But it can't be harder than some of the vampiric plants we made that devour all life in the area until they burn themselves out, right? We managed to create a few of those, so we should be able to make something to devour Ice; it can't be harder than one based on Death." She shrugged, trying to play off her lack of confidence.

"Those plants were devouring Life, not Death, even if they were centred around Death. If we used that concept, the plant would devour heat, creating an incredibly cool area. Not quite as useful when it comes to dealing with the guardian, right?" I poked a hole in her idea, only for her face to turn pensive.

"But they exploded into a wave of death afterwards, remember?" There was a gleam in her eyes that made me a tad uncomfortable, "What if these would explode into heat and fire afterwards, once they managed to tunnel their roots through the guardian, sapping it of the little heat the thing uses to move? We might get one big, big boom," she grinned, the idea apparently quite exciting to her.

"Might work," Lia suddenly threw in, the grin on her face mirroring that on Luna's, "I've been trying to come up with a good way to make explosives, though that part of Alchemy had been more Alex's speciality compared to mine. I might manage to make something interesting, though I'm not sure if it would be as interesting as your idea, Sister," she explained, only to add in a quiet voice, "Or as explosive, for that matter."

"I'm sure we can work together to get something suitably spectacular." Luna's grin was only growing wider, showing me a side of my daughter I hadn't seen expressed in this way before. I wasn't sure if this enthusiasm frightened or excited me, though I think it was a bit of both.

"Better keep things simple for the start," I gently warned them off, "Otherwise you will continue to overload your project as you are trying to cram more and more ideas into it, until it doesn't work at all."

Both of my daughters nodded at my words, though the gleam in their eyes told an entirely different story. Nearby, Silva was chuffing quietly, her version of amused laughter, a realisation that made me groan softly.

"How about we start with something simple, plants that feed on general, elemental energy, not necessarily Ice. We did some of those before, focused on heat, and we've seen a few things that fed on Astral Power, you know, other than Lia over there," I told the pair, trying to channel their enthusiasm into a somewhat safe direction.

"Well, I know that I can use Ice Astral Power to fuel myself, but it's not all that efficient," Lia admitted, making me curious if she could sense the differences in Astral Power as she fed. I just infused my blood with the whole mix within me, but that didn't mean much, given how strong my Ice Affinity was.

"We could take another look at the way your body and soul use the Astral Power you take in. As long as we are careful, it shouldn't hurt," I suggested, making a small incision in my hand to provide sustenance to my daughter. Maybe this would give us a good idea of where we could start the guardian's destruction. Hopefully, without causing major damage to the surrounding area in the process, I wanted to keep the area, not turn it into more of a wasteland than it already was.

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