Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan grabbed the opposite vein. He was not sure what he expected, but it was not what he got. The essence in his body was pulled out, but it was different than when he exhausted it for various tasks. When he reinforced himself, the essence was expended negating the force of an impact. Without an impact, no essence was used.

Some metal essence was pulled out and into the elemental. Silver started leaking up the vessel, dyeing it a metallic brown. That was not the issue, in fact, it made Tristan excited. He had a little more than two times the essence that this elemental had, he would be able to easily reach the heart. No, the problem came in the form of an essence vacuum.

Tristan was not sure what else to call it, but it was emptiness that circulated like carbonation through his kern. He was not too worried, as he could just use the consumption alloy to destroy them. At least that was what he thought. Until the unstoppable power of hunger slid off the voids, almost as if they did not exist.

Unsure of what was happening, he let go of the elemental. No need to keep producing these intangible bubbles if he had no idea what they were. The first one reached his heart. He would have stopped it but he could not interact with it as it moved along with the rest of his blood.

Something happened.

Hailey shook her head, for some reason she thought she had been looking at a skeleton. There was something massive going on outside, she was not sure what. The fortress rocked as cataclysmic amounts of essence were released. Sam squeezed her hand and smiled at her. Sam was Ajax’s third in command, he could protect her. That’s what he had promised to get her to come.

Tristan staggered back from the elemental. Out of reflex he reinforced his fist and lunged back at the skeleton. There were several more voids and he could not let anything touch his mind. His fist made contact with the rib cage and smashed through. He tore the heart out and stomped on it.

The elemental started dissolving into basic essence. Focusing inward Tristan saw that the bubbles were still there. What were they? He felt as if he was actually inside the bunker before it fell. The memory slotted in perfectly. It would have definitely caused cognitive dissonance if the person had been similar to himself.

He turned toward the mine, he needed help. Luke was the closest thing to a healer he was aware of. Maybe the Golden Heart patriarch. He took a step…

And staggered as another shockwave tore through the fortress. Hailey looked, horrified through the now open hole in the wall. This was impossible, a city floated in the sky at roughly the same altitude as the fortress. A disk of land filled with stone columned structures. People in armor lined its edges trying to assist their fake gods with their prayer.

Hailey scrambled back. She did not want to die today. The fortress listed to the side as the Steel Saint and the god of fire collided. The god lost, the floating city lost, and the fortress all lost as the saint tore the god in half. Even at a distance of thirty miles, the fortress of metal was shunted aside like a toy boat.

Her mind went hazy as she was thrown against the wall. Sam, where was Sam? Hailey staggered out into the main hallway. Her foot caught on something soft, causing her to trip and fall to…

Tristan hit the sand. He wrapped his arms around his stomach. She had, Tristan shook his head, this was not him. It was someone else’s memories, but he had felt it with his senses. His metal-attributed senses. That man, he remembered him being called the Steel Saint, what was he? He could feel metal essence and that man had more of it in one hand than there was essence of any kind in the caldera.

It scrambled his balance and made him want to vomit. The fear that it caused was still a very recent memory for him, even if he knew logically it was from ancient times. He tried standing but keeping his feet proved to be too much.

Turning to the guards, Tristan managed to groan out, “Go get Luke or Conni.”

One ran off, just as another arrived with paper. There was not anything he could do. He could not even flail impotently at this problem. Taking deep breaths he tried to focus on what the problem could be. If he could figure out what went wrong, he could fix it. He regretted killing the elemental, with it dead there was no way to examine it.

Though maybe there was another way. He may not have the body, but it seemed he had some of the memories. Sitting down cross-legged, he put his back to the mobile wall the elemental had originally been strapped to. He turned his focus inward and prepared himself for the next memory.

“You need to go,” the man she could not recognize said.

The man had black skin and the royal purple eyes of a dark kern. He was wearing thick engineer’s clothing. Hailey had no idea what he was doing in elite warriors’ quarters. She had no idea what she was doing here either.

“No, I’m staying!” Hailey said, clutching the unconscious man.

“Sam’s dead, dying too won’t honor him!” The man yelled.

“Sai!” A big man with a hammer yelled, “Save the willing ones, I need to help the general.”

The engineer grimaced and staggered to a different room. Now that Hailey was sitting down the rocking did not disturb her as much. Though the spinning was an issue. The rotation was enough that she was actually sitting on the ceiling. She watched the world flash from the sky to a mountain range and back again.

Sam’s head lolled to the side at an unnatural angle. Just unconscious Hailey told herself. They would make it out of here. They would start a family in a new world.

The mountains flashed by, they were falling toward the peak of one of them. The top was missing like something extremely sharp had sliced the top off. At least they would have a nice flat spot to start their farm.

Tristan came back to himself in time to flail about like an idiot. He viscerally felt the desire to hold that corpse. That it could somehow return from the dead, and it would make him the happiest person on earth. Now he wanted to vomit for a completely different reason.

He pushed the thoughts down and turned to the guards, who were watching him with concern. Tristan did not have much time and he was not sure if he was completely lucid even now.

“How long did I space out?” Tristan asked with urgency.

The guard holding the pad of paper answered, “Around three minutes.”

So he was seeing the elemental’s memories. That was impossible, it was just a construct created of earth essence animated by a remnant will. With a start he realized, he was witnessing Hailey’s greatest regret. Why else would someone cling to a corpse while falling?

Falling? Why was a bunker falling? New world, this was proof Connie was on to something. Or both of them were insane, Tristan was sure Hailey qualified as insane. Taking a deep breath he steadied himself. He needed to steady his mind before it got taken again.

Wait, the grand ancestor was an engineer?

The force of absorption in the metal lessened the impact on Hailey’s section. Everyone at the front of the fortress would have taken the brunt of the impact, though they were also the most durable. The general might have even survived, it was hard to kill legends.

Now that the rotation had abruptly stopped, Hailey was hurled into the wall. She was beyond caring. They had landed, they were safe. Something dripped into her eyes, but she did not care. The hole that the Steel Saint had made was nearly ground level, Hailey was not sure if she should curse him or thank him for that.

Throwing one of Sam’s arms over her shoulder, Hailey limped out of the fortress. There was a slight drop, but she could make it. First Hailey poked her head out and inspected the surroundings. Pieces of the fortress had been sheered off and dropped all over the place like a bunch of children’s toys.

Unfortunately, her perfectly flat farming land had been converted into a crater. The biggest shard of the ship seemed to have punched all the way into the water table. Water was quickly filling that area. At least irrigation would be taken care of.

A crack caught her attention. The sound was like a mountain being cracked open. When Hailey looked up, she realized that her guess might not be too far off from the truth. Above the crater, the cultist’s floating city had been cracked in half. Both pieces were falling straight down. That would definitely kill them if it hit.

Fortunately, Hailey had an armored shell to hide in. The floating city landed, driving the fortress down like a nail into the mountain. Darkness was everywhere, the hole that was an easy exit was now gone. She wanted to cry, so Hailey did. Sitting beside Sam, she realized that she was going to die. At least it would be with people she loved, reminiscing about a life she would never get to live.

“Tristan. Answer me, boy,” An ugly face came into view slowly.

While Hailey had been accepting of death, Tristan was not. He scrambled back to avoid the cultist-covered meteor. Conni took a step back, not wanting to be on the receiving end of whatever Tristan ended up doing. His fire affinity did not specialize in defense.

Focusing on Connie, Tristan calmed himself, “One more, that's it.”

“One more of what?” Conni asked, exasperation clear in his voice.

“Memory, hold on,” Tristan clenched his eyes shut as he got ready to go through the last one.

Darkness. Nothing but black. It did not know how long it sat holding the body. Long enough that it became dust. It needed someone, though it no longer knew why.

“Dig.”

It was not what it was born to do. However, its instincts told it to obey. It shambled to its skeletal feet and went to the center of its world. Many others were there too, all scratching and clawing at the floor. It joined them.

“Dig.”

They made no progress, but still, for hundreds of years they dug. Until the world was broken open. It did not know what was going on, all those it dug with were given a new command.

“Kill.”

Its master wanted new, better soldiers. Those who could dig needed to dig would be recruited. It was grabbed by a man of stone and broken by a man of metal, but still, it had orders.

“Kill.”

Tristan opened his eyes feeling the same feelings that Hailey felt, or at least her soul felt. His eyes dilated and locked onto Conni. The feeling was just as strong, the Lord needed soldiers.

Conni barely had time to react as Tristan jumped towards him. While Hailey’s memories were dramatically different, her elemental’s world had revolved around killing. That was something that Tristan was very familiar with.

With Conni out of range, he turned towards the guard. They backed up nervously, hands on their weapons.

“Don’t kill him,” Conni said, “Go get help.”

The future subjects of the Lord backed up. Tristan turned his attention back to the leader. Despite the fact that he was operating under Hailey’s memories, he was still Tristan. Unlike the soft civilian, he was not tier one and he was not unfamiliar with combat. He had a kern and knew how to use it.