Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan did not stick around to watch, he knew he could not handle what was coming. While there was no stairway leading upwards, Tristan had no issue holding his body weight with only his arms. He started climbing hand over hand as fast as he could.

Below the metal groaned as something from below ripped it apart from beneath. Despite the relatively malleable state of the tower steel, it put up a remarkable resistance to the elemental lord. Tristan had not even made it ten feet up before the metal could take no more and cracked apart.

What emerged was something that Tristan could describe as a nightmare. Luke and the other warriors had described the elemental lord that they had faced and this one was exactly the same, except for its colors. It was completely missing its skin, instead, its whole body was covered in slabs of molten lava for muscle that wrapped around an onyx black skeleton. The lava seemed to be flowing down the body, giving an optical elusion that the creature was in a semi-liquid state.

Silver eyes sat within lidless sockets and were the only part that was metal affinity. It wore metal half plate, though it looked like it was less for protection and more for aesthetics. It rose straight up out of the hole in the floor, at first Tristan wondered what kind of platform it was standing on. The answer was nothing. The elemental lord could fly.

It rose about twenty feet up surveying its surroundings with its hands clasped behind its back. Regis took a few steps back, he had correctly judged that this one was far out of his league. Tristan for his part redoubled his climbing efforts. The elemental lord seemed content to bask in its newfound freedom, all the way up until a bolt from one of the cannons slammed into it.

There was a flicker of movement, and the elemental lord snatched the projectile out of the air. He rocked backward a few feet to bleed off the projectile’s inertia. After inspecting the bolt for a few seconds, it was tossed aside.

“You dare strike your king?”

There was no malice in the voice, simply confusion and disbelief that anyone would raise their hand against him. To be fair, the elemental had been buried in what was essentially a tomb since the founding of the Caldera. Tristan had never paid much attention to history though he knew that Grand Elder Sai had lived for almost three hundred years. It had been a few generations since his death, so it was possible that the elemental lord had spent four or five hundred years sitting on his butt.

The answer to the elemental’s question came in the form of another bolt. This time it just waved its hand and Tristan could feel the metal essence inside the head move to the side. Had it just taken control of the metal outside its own body? From everything Tristan knew, that should be impossible. Even if the elemental had the strength of a tier nine, its real essence reserves were that of a tier six fire kern, tier six dark kern, and a tier six metal kern. Powerful, but nothing in the progression path of a kern should allow it to control essence in the environment.

The only explanation Tristan could think of was that the elemental lord had a dark kern, and the other two elements were different things altogether. Conni had called the elemental serving as a muscle structure an anima elemental, so was Tristan looking at an anima and a third unnamed power at work?

“Fine, accept your punishment.”

The elemental lord had much more finesse than Regis and his indiscriminate rings of flame. The cannons were simply jerked off the edge of the pit. Anyone too slow to let go was pulled off with them, those who managed to avoid falling could only stare in shock. They did not even try to run when the elemental lord dislodged the spikes ringing the mouth of the pit and started impaling people.

Tristan was pretty sure his reinforcement would not let him survive a spike to the face. He climbed faster, reaching the eighty foot mark. Something caught ahold of him and started dragging him away from the wall. His chain mail under armor dragged him out into the open air. Tristan had been proud of his chain mail, it required no rivets, making it slightly stronger than ordinary chain mail.

He realized why no one above ran. The elemental lord had used their armor to hold them slightly off the ground. It was a minimal application of essence that invalidated most defenses. Tristan tried to pull the chainmail shirt off, but it was being squeezed tightly to his body like a large being was holding him in its fist.

“Don’t think I have forgotten about you.”

Tristan met the metal eyes of the elemental lord. They had the same texture a human eye naturally did, though the silver made it difficult to tell unless the elemental was far closer than you wanted him to be.

“What did I ever do to you,” Tristan asked. He struggled for a few more moments, before giving up. Even if he got the metal off, it was an eighty foot fall into a pit that the elemental lord was floating above.

“You disobeyed, that is treason.”

“I’m not an elemental,” Tristan tried to explain his situation, “I just took one of their memories.”

“Your defense against treason is that you both stole from and killed one of my loyal subjects?”

The elemental lord cocked its head to the side like it was genuinely confused. Maybe it was. It was the one who had first given the kill order, sending its own ‘subjects’ off to get killed. He had sent the tier one earth elemental Tristan had hijacked to go fight Siren of all people. Tristan felt that the elemental lord had sentenced his own people to death, though Tristan did not intend to speak that thought.

Instead, he said, “They attacked first. What were we supposed to do? Let them kill us?”

“Yes, if you do not serve willingly, it is only reasonable that you shed your flesh and ascend to an eternal life. It is the kindness of a ruler to grant eternity to their vassals.”

There was no reasoning with this creature. It had too alien of a viewpoint. It was immortal which was a benefit that it only received by dying. Tristan was sure that the eyes he was looking into were the last remnants of Ajax. That man had been a noble person from what little Tristan had seen, and he was nothing like this elemental lord, despite being formed of his regret.

Tristan needed to find some way to talk his way out. The elemental lord did not need everyone to die, just the ones who would not serve him. There was a low chance that the elemental lord would spare him, there was just one problem. He would never serve another being. Tristan knew the dangers of putting his life in other people’s hands and knew that he could trust no one more than himself.

His thoughts were interrupted by a yell, “Who or what are you?” Both Tristan and the elemental lord looked down to see Regis waving his sword around impotently, “Are you a messenger of the gods or a foe for me to destroy.”

Tristan expected the elemental lord to pin Regis to the ground like an insect. What he got was more philosophical than he had expected.

“I know not of what gods you speak, I have been trapped underground since my birth, so you will have to be the judge of that. As for who and what, I am the Lord of the Underworld, though my original host’s name was Ajax, it shall suffice as a name. My title should make it clear, I am the darkness that fills men's hearts, the steadiness and flame of passion that fills their steps, and I am the conviction filling a mind of steel. I am the Lord of the Underworld because that is where all men go and a realm I have surpassed. That is what I am.”

Regis’s eyes were wide in shock, then he did something Tristan should have expected, but still took him by surprise. He fell to his knees, “You must be a mighty chosen of the gods. That could be the only way someone could return from the grave!”

The man was not wrong, whatever remnant of the heroes from their legends were the components of this creature. As Regis had definitely never met an elemental lord before, he would have no way of telling what it really was. The Lord of the Underworld had burst through the ground like some sort of deific being and had shown powers no others could use.

“Good. I accept your fealty. Even a ruler cannot demand service without a price. What is your demand.”

That took Tristan by surprise. The elemental lord had no problem throwing away the lives of its thralls just to free itself. Why was it being so generous now?

“Give me a sign or a token that I may take back to the temple to rally the people to your banner,” Regis said.

“So be it.”

Then he did something truly horrifying. Ajax held out one clawed hand and a man came flying down to float beside Tristan. Henry frantically tried to take his armor off but was running into the same issues that Tristan had, the clasps were undone, but the plates were held together by an invisible force.

“Serve me.”

Henry ignored the elemental lord’s request. Opting to stab it with his spear. The spear was casually flicked out of the patriarch’s hands.

“This outcome is suitable. You have loved ones? You will never be able to save them. Never protect them, and even if they survive the coming purge, you will never see them again.”

The molten lines on the muscle tissue of the elemental intensified until the air around it combusted. It then spent the next thirty minutes burning Henry alive. Glowing palm melted the metal to the patriarch’s flesh and scorched the skin from his skull. Ajax never touched the man’s heart.

Tristan knew what he was doing. If intense regret created an elemental, then he was artificially creating a situation that would result in the birth of a tier four light elemental. Was that his fate? Looking at the man who was currently having his flesh melted off, Tristan contemplated suicide for the first time in his life. If he was going to die either way he wanted it to be quick.

When the screaming stopped, the body was released. It trailed smoke and the now brittle armor shattered when it hit the ground. After a tense moment, there was a light from the chest of the corps. A prismatic heart grew blinding white bones and blood vessels that pumped rainbows through them. The sight would have been mesmerizing if Tristan had not just watched Henry die.

Another light joined it as a slime elemental filled with fire and crackling lightning crawled out of the hole in the ground. It was followed by another light elemental, though this one was an anima elemental. Tristan watched in fascination as the muscle crawled over the bones and the slime squeezed itself into the cranium through the back of the skull.

The result was something that Tristan could only call an angel of death. It had a perfectly white body laced with pulsing prismatic veins and eyes that burned with fire and crackled with lighting.

“This will be my emissary, take her to your people, she will be a peacemaker.” Ajax turned to Tristan, “For you, I have a different desire. There shall be no eternity for you. I will crush your kern and erase your name from history. Treason shall not be tolerated.”

“I’m not an elemental!” Tristan yelled, “I can’t betray someone I’m not loyal to in the first place.”

Ajax moved in a blur of fire and shadow, his fingers punched straight through Tristan’s chest and out his back. The chain mail did nothing to protect him. He looked down at the arm shoved through his rib cage and distantly heard someone screaming something. Then the elemental lord shook Tristan off his arm and let him fall to the ground.

The last thing he saw was the creature drop his now missing heart.