Grand Saint Alloy

“Thump-thump,”

Was all he heard for what felt like years. It took a long time for Tristan to realize that the noise was odd. He should not be hearing anything right now. Slowly, he opened his eyes, it was pitch black above, but he could feel something below him. It was painful like he was lying on a broken piece of furniture that happened to be made of metal.

“Thump-thump,”

Tristan flinched at the sound as memories came back. A hand crisscrossed with glowing red lines sank through his reinforced body like it was no more than water. Then falling. How was he alive, he could only feel coldness in his chest, no pain, though he assumed getting a heart removed should be pretty painless. At least the aftermath should be, the actual removal had been so shocking the pain had not registered over his panic.

Slowly he moved his arm. The appendage was heavy like it did not want to move. Tristan did not care, he moved it anyway. Trembling he reached toward the injury. His hand passed the point where it should have touched skin, he felt bone and jerked away.

Tristan struggled to move his head, however lifting it proved to be too difficult of a task. He tried to make a metal construct in the shape of a flat bar to leverage his head up, however, a sharp pain caused him to stop. Looking around, Tristan realized he was indeed lying on a pile of broken furniture. It was too dark to see the desks, but his metal sense let him know he was currently at the bottom of the tower.

It also let him know that there was a chair leg right next to his hand. Evidently, he had landed on, and destroyed, an old piece of furniture. If he had not been using his entire reinforcement, the chair might have killed him. Though landing on a chair had to be less lethal than getting his heart stolen. Despite the situation, Tristan chuckled. Dad jokes were always great.

He frowned at the thought, he was not a dad. Dad jokes were stupid. For some reason, he felt judged for that thought. The slight chuckle hurt, refocusing him on his task. He grabbed the metal chair leg and used it to pry his head up and get a look at his upper torso. Then he remembered, he could not see anything. This effort had been pointless.

Tristan was glad Luke was not around, his friend would have made fun of him for not using his metal sense to inspect his kern. The result was shocking. A lattice of image alloy was making a mold for a construct. A construct that had perfectly copied his kern all the way down to the beating heart. It was consuming essence as fast as he regenerated it, but aside from the damaged muscle, it was keeping his body together. His exposed metal heart was guarded by a net of metal veins and bones as it beat within his chest. The organs that normally would have been displaced were held in place by the circulatory system and its omnipresent blood. It was the reason why it was hard to move anything, his whole kern was now mimicking a flexible alloy.

It was flexible in the same way a spring was flexible. Any movement was resisted until he allowed it to return to its original position. He was also not recovering at all. No healing was occurring, just the maintaining of life and he would not recover essence until he found a way to fix this. It gave him time, though he was not sure how much.

He started moving different muscles and quickly confirmed that so long as the muscles were attached, he could muscle through the tension of his kern. Tristan experimented with his leg first, as he would not immediately die if his leg broke the solidified kern. It was difficult and he was sure that it limited his strength while using it to around tier one. Pretty good for having a fist sized chest wound.

Slowly, Tristan pushed himself up. His left arm was mostly useless, sticking out at an odd angle. He could still feel it, but many of the muscles that he would normally use to move it were located in his chest and back. Repeatedly, he pulsed his metal sense to make sure he did not trip and fall. Fortunately, everything down here was made of metal.

Something was being done above his head, metal was being moved and inserted into the walls of the pit. It reminded Tristan of a hive with tunnels going into the earth. He could not feel people or elementals inside, though he would not feel them unless they had metal essence. If Ajax was planning on staying here, this pit would be almost impossible to assault. Normally an enemy force could just siege the exit, but elementals did not eat sleep, or breathe. Even if someone decided to fill the hole, the elementals could still force their way out.

Tristan grimaced, this was not an ideal situation. He would need to climb out with the effective skills of a one armed tier one while being trapped in the enemy’s center of power. Slowly, he made his way over the discarded debris and under the crack, the elemental lord had torn his way through. Once below he looked up, the stray sky above blended with the metal, creating an illusion that there were only a handful of stars left in the sky.

The roof was about forty feet above his head, well beyond his current reach. He considered whether or not he could build a ladder out of all this scrap metal. As he inspected it, he realized it was possible if he staggered the desktops and their supports. Unfortunately, it would also be extremely unstable, he did not think it would even stand on its own.

Turning he panned his metal sense over the whole room again. This time his mental perception caught on something he had overlooked. There was a patch of dense metal essence floating inside a cavity inside the wall. He had mistaken it for a solid wall, as the metal essence was thicker than anything he had ever seen.

This was about twenty feet up inside the wall. Fortunately, this one would be easier to climb. There was a railing running straight up, if the fortress was horizontal like it was meant to be, then the railing would be at about hip height. Still tier one would be enough to climb it, even one handed. Fortunately, he had his right hand had been frozen in a fist, so clamping it around the metal bar would be quite easy.

Placing both boots against the wall, Tristan started climbing. It was slow and for the first time, he hoped this artifact was of a useable tier. If it was tier four, it would be useful for a shorter duration as he climbed through the tiers, but at least he could use it. If it was five or higher right now, he was not sure what he could do. There was no way for him to break his kern and advance without killing himself.

He painfully climbed over the ledge and rolled onto his back. That short climb had been exhausting. His heavy breathing led him to another discovery, his kern refilled faster while inside this metal essence fog. Tristan would still not risk using it, even if the kern was full. There was simply no way to predict how using essence would affect his false heart.

After around ten minutes, Tristan felt ready to go find the artifact in question. The air was surprisingly clear despite the aura being given off. He had expected a haze or fog, then with a start, he realized he was able to see. Looking back into the main chamber, he found a beam of moonlight entering through the hole. Tristan knew that the meager light would not last long as the moon moved through the sky.

He hurried into the tunnel, the metal essence getting denser as he went. The area before him felt solid, no different from the surrounding metal, but to his eyes the space was empty. Tristan was starting to get worried, back when he tried to measure Ajax’s abilities, he had believed that the majority of the metal essence was from the elemental. Now he was reconsidering, there was more metal essence in this room than he had ever felt. While it did not hold a candle to the Steel Saint’s essence, it still dwarfed Tristans many times over.

He took another step forward before he lost the advantage of the moonlight. The air resisted, not like metal, but like water and his essence recovery rose again. He slogged into a room with a dozen partitions with some kind of pot in them, pipes ran along the wall from the pots. The essence was emanating from the last section. Halfway through, the light faded, and he had to return to using his metal sense. It did not help, it told him that he was currently trapped within a coffin of solid steel.

It was good to know that his senses could be fooled. However the fact that an ownerless artifact could do that did not bode well for the chances Tristan could use it. Placing a hand on the wall, he stumbled his way to the back of the odd room. The difficulty was more psychological than any physical difficulty. If he turned his metal sense off, he felt blind, if it was on he felt claustrophobic. Neither helped, as he was still surprised.

“Hello young man, how are you this fine evening,” A voice said.

Tristan panicked, now he knew he was both claustrophobic and blind. It was as if he was underwater and a large beast he could not see was circling him. He was too hurt to react and too blind to run.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to stall you,” the voice paused as if expecting an answer. A sigh followed shortly after, “No one gets my humor. Heartless jerk.”

Tristan realized that the voice was speaking directly into his head, however, he was not proficient enough in mental conversations to talk back, so he spoke aloud, “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I want to make a deal, I give you some power, and at some point in your life, you take me home,” the voice said.

Power sounded nice, but any being that could generate an essence field this dense had to either be desperate or the task was not as simple as it sounded. Tristan strongly doubted that home was as simple as finding the right homestead in the Caldera. Maybe he would have to go visit the hostile nation. Fighting his way through a foreign land was not a deal he could make good on.

“Where is your home?” Tristan asked.

“City of Wonders, the great citadel Sumendi of the Numitor empire!” The person said cheerily.

“That does not help, what is an empire?” Tristan asked. He only knew of two nation types, a Caldera and a Kingdom. The latter was only because of Conni’s story.

“You really are a hillbilly. Mountain Billy, I guess. Anyway, it's on a different plane which is why I need your help,” the voice said.

Tristan had started to lean more toward the belief that other planes existed, but to have it confirmed was still a big deal. Still, it did not change his circumstances, he needed to survive, and if surviving took him to another world, all the better.

“I admit that exploring a different word is an intriguing idea, what kind of power are you offering to make it worth leaving my friends and family behind,” Tristan did not care about leaving Shadow Fist, Forest, and Helen behind, but if he could use them to get more stuff from this entity he would do it.

“ME!” The voice said happily, “Behold the glory that is Vulcan Numitor!”

A flame lit up the darkness, and inside the final partition sat a black lamppost topped with a lamp burning with an unconfined flame.