Grand Saint Alloy

Even with his dark essence crippled and lacking a weapon, Siren was more than Tristan could handle. He had an extra force, two backup tier two reservoirs, and the most powerful artifact in the caldera. He had set up an advantageous battleground, as metal resisted the grinding effects of the dissonance much better than stone, while the silver glow eliminated the cloaking effect of dark essence. With all of that in his favor, Tristan would have still lost to Siren if Luke had not punted him back into the fire.

As it was Tristan could feel the cracks running through his kern. It was not broken, yet, but it was close enough that he could push it over the edge if he wished. With a good amount of effort, he heaved Siren onto his shoulders. Earth kerns did not normally make someone quite as dense as a metal kern, but Siren was a head taller than Tristan. If he was to take a guess, the man weighed more than three hundred and fifty pounds.

“Good job,” Luke laughed as Tristan approached, “You are the world’s greatest punching bag.”

“I feel like the world's greatest punching bag,” Tristan said. It came out nasally through a nose he was sure had been broken twice.

Eve and Bruce stood beside Luke with horrified looks on their faces. Tristan wondered if Luke had told them what was going on, or if he just wanted to see their reactions. It did not matter, Tristan rolled Siren off his shoulders and onto the edge of the crater.

He put the reservoir of healing alloy in Siren's mouth. Tristan was not sure why placing a soul inside another soul dispersed the weaker one, but it was an interaction that turned this little marble from a choking hazard to the world's greatest medicine. Luke poured some of his protein shake down Siren’s throat, even in his unconscious state he grimaced as his instincts made him swallow.

“Now he’s a soul eater too,” Tristan muttered to Luke.

That got a chuckle out of Luke, “There isn’t much you can do now, so I suggest you take advantage of the situation and go break yours as well.”

Tristan nodded, “Toss me a metal reservoir?”

Luke threw him the only tier four one they had been able to find, it had been earth attuned before. Tristan had emptied it and then restocked it with metal essence. It was not a tier four quality, but he hoped that quantity would be enough. Then he got an idea, a dumb idea, he had quality essence all around him, and he only needed to collect it.

“Luke, how do those handcuffs work?” Tristan asked.

“Huh, they drain fluid essence from the body, why?” Luke asked.

“That's a reckless idea,” Vulcan said, “You could pop yourself like a giant bloody bubble.”

“Fluid essence is normally only found in a kern, but I have an entire crater full of it and a force that allows me to mix my forces with other forces,” Tristan said.

Luke’s eyes widened, and a slightly manic grin spread across his face, “Do it.”

Tristan had two options. Listen to the ancient and wise entity whose goals depended on Tristan’s survival and growth, or fold to peer pressure. He had been through a lot, it had made him grow up fast, but ultimately, Tristan was only eighteen. Of course, he chose peer pressure.

Removing the earth reservoir from the cuffs, Tristan replaced it with the metal version, with one crucial difference. The input pole and output pole were reversed. Instead of sucking essence out of him, it would shove it in. This would hurt and have a chance of poisoning his kern as he was not dealing with pure metal essence, there was also air and fire. He felt his chances were good though, as he not only had alloy to dilute it, he also had consumption to convert it, and healing to repair the damage.

“Oh, good morning, I’ll be back in a few hours,” Tristan waved to Eve and Bruce as he left.

He ran for the center of the fire, pulling off a glove and letting his hand trail through the fire. It ground into his skin until he reinforced it, slowing down the destruction. Despite that, the fire worked like a file, removing layer after layer, forcing more and more essence to be utilized. Finally, the cracked kern shattered.

Every time it hurt worse, but Tristan’s tolerance grew. Stars floated in his vision, but he was still able to keep his consciousness. It was time, he snapped the cuffs on, and essence flooded in. He also realized that he might have made a mistake.

One was not supposed to use an essence source more than two tiers higher. It was dangerous, and lethal over a prolonged time unless the source was extremely stable. The daggers he received from Hadrid were a good example, their tier was way too high, but adamance was stable by nature. The issue was this essence was not tier five like Hadrid supposedly was, it was tier six. Tristan had just hooked himself up to a pump full of heroic-level unstable essence.

Tristan was flooded by an enormous amount of essence as the entire crater's worth of flame was dragged towards him. A tier four metal sense was over one hundred and fifty feet in every direction, meaning almost two acres of dissonant essence were dragged in. Slowly at the edges and speeding up as it came closer.

His broken kern was flooded with primordial essence on one side and dissonant essence on the other. The process of repair was skipped in favor of simply filling the whole vessel. Tristan’s veins turned silver, and falling to his knees he vomited up silver blood. It was not like normal, silver tinted, no he could see his reflection like it was a mirror.

He could feel his veins calcifying. That was not right, he was not being converted into metal, it was growing inside him like a crystal. The fire and air essence were being converted into metal essence at a truly terrifying rate, the waste product activated every piece of decay in his body. Pieces rotted away only to be replaced by shining metal as the architect alloy tried to keep him whole.

All this was going on and the ordeal had only just started. Waves of silver fire bathed him eroding his armor and grinding away his skin, only to get consumed as well and feeding even more decay. Tristan would have died right then and there if Vulcan had not been there. Through the pain of being ground down by the forces of nature and chaotic flames, Vulcan finally made himself heard.

“GROWTH, FOOL,” He yelled, “Decay feeds growth!”

Tristan had never tried using the growth force alchemically baked into his heart in such a manner. It was the only force he had that could work independently of Alloy, thus he had to be wary of it causing uncontrolled growth. However, at this point, this was what he needed. His lack of skill in utilizing this force was quickly shown as tumors and pocked flesh replaced the decayed areas.

This growth still had nerves, making the whole ordeal more painful. But now it was survivable. Tristan could not be sure of what would be left, but he would survive.

Vulcan mentally grimaced, boy did not realize how screwed he was. The ancient being decided to take some of the burden. While fire and air essence were lethally toxic due to their compounding nature, dissonant fire was only harmful to Vulcan, not lethal. His kern was contaminated, with essence from the material plane.

Unlike Tristan, Vulcan lacked a body. He could not process the foreign essence only dilute it over time as he expended his reserves and refilled them with primordial forces. The air essence was left for Tristan to handle, as Vulcan could not manipulate it.

This was the fastest breakthrough Tristan had ever experienced. It took less than ten hours, but the breaking and reforging of his kern was not the end of his struggles. He was forced to pull chunks of metal out of his body and let the healing essence repair them. Decay had to be used to cut away tumors and growths.

It was exhausting. Tristan knew he had made good progress, but that it would take a few days free of fighting to put himself back together. Right now he just needed to be mobile and stable. The first pieces of metal growth he replaced were the few in his guts. He ate a second marble full of healing alloy, as the dark arterial blood needed to be stemmed quickly.

Thankfully, the healing radiated out from his stomach, which was not far from the injury. Once death was no longer imminent, he grabbed another shard and tore it out. Piece after piece fell to the side, leaving Tristan in a puddle of his blood with a pile of gory shrapnel beside him.

The tier four reservoir was filled to the brim with essence, he removed it from the cuff and started on the bone growths. Using rot to remove pieces of his body was the most painful thing he had ever done. It was cold, itchy, and somehow burned all at once. Normally he would have stopped, but he was not sure he would be able to start again if he stopped halfway. Thankfully most of it was centered around the wrist with the cuff on it, if he had gotten a brain tumor, or shrapnel then he would have immediately died.

He did not get to finish. Ignoring pain can cause exhaustion of its own, and with a broken kern, Tristan was already near his limit. He could not tell the point where consciousness ended and the darkness began.