Grand Saint Alloy

“What you want is the force of growth, it is the half of your healing force that you are missing,” Vulcan said.

Tristan relayed that to Hadrid, who nodded, “It's a cheap force to get a hold of, basically every plant bleeds growth. However, it will cause cancerous growths, as the tissue expands beyond the borders of what is natural.”

“I know, it's missing the the architect force, but I have already alloyed with that one, it’s the only reason I’m still alive,” Tristan said.

Vulcan had explained that the force Tristan had gotten his hands on was more of an imaging force and that it had utility far beyond healing. It was mainly used by architects and engineers to test their inventions out. Many crafters would use it to give items or materials self repair qualities, and the only downside was that it was extremely rare in nature. It was actually pretty useless for healing unless it was coupled with growth.

“So how does this process work?” Tristan asked.

Hadrid inspected him for a moment, “I don’t really know why it works, though I do have a theory. The body is made of essence and the soul dictates what forces are used. I believe that this process creates a dependency on a certain force and a draw from the primordial realm is established to fill that new dependency.”

Vulcan sent over a picture of a man face palming, “No you fool, that's how you kill people. You can’t just create a dependency and expect it to work out. He’s on drugs I bet.”

Tristan looked from the heart in the glass container to Hadrid and asked, “It sounds like you use trial and error until you get a result you like?”

Hadrid nodded proudly, “Of course, though don’t be too worried, I have millions of chances to get this right.”

“All he needs to do is influence the scribes with the force of growth and leave everything else alone. No need to touch the mitochondria for a heart,” Vulcan explained.

Tristan relayed that to the alchemist, who simply nodded, “Don’t talk down to me, I know what I’m doing. When you reach tier four you’ll realize how hard this is.”

“How long do you expect it to take?” Tristan asked.

“Impatient much,” Hadrid’s eyes flicked down to his chest cavity, “I suppose that makes sense. It will only take a few hours after I find the right piece. Finding that scribe as you say, could take me a day or more. The building blocks that make up a person are very complex.”

Tristan nodded and instead of asking about the progress every five minutes, he watched and asked Vulcan some questions, “What is a mitochondria? And why is it bad to enhance it?”

“It is the energy source of those building blocks. The building blocks of the body can be broken down into three main areas. The nucleus which is what we are working on now, the mitochondria which is the power of the cell, and the cell wall. Each corresponds with and can be attuned to certain laws reminiscent of the three types of essence use. The nucleus is the mind and roughly correlates to the dominion, the mitochondria matches the kern quite nicely, and the cell wall is tied to the anima. The reason why I don’t want him touching your mitochondria is that it should already be attuned to Alloy,” Vulcan said, “If it's changed both your body and soul could reject it, and believe me that is a painful way to go.”

Tristan had been under the impression that the body and soul were separate things. It was common for an elemental or an artifact to be created upon death, and that required a soul, but not a body. If the elementals could use a brain, then he saw no reason why they would not.

“Vulcan, what exactly is a soul?” Tristan asked, “How is it attached to a body.”

It was a few moments before Vulcan answered, “It is complicated and quite debated in my homeland, but the main definition that most people accept, is the ability to act in accordance with your instincts, to build habits, and to change those habits with enough effort. In animals we call it instinct, in humans, we call it free will. I am inclined to call it our conscience, it is the voice we have in the back of our head telling us right from wrong.”

“As to how it connects to the body no one knows, some people believe it is like a set of clothes, others believe it is anchored to some part of the body. One of those theorized areas is actually the heart, so I suppose that one can be discounted. I believe that it is anchored to the body, every part, which is why alchemy has a nearly impossible time working on living beings. It's also the reason why someone with a powerful water kern can’t just rip the blood out of your body.”

Interesting, that was good to know. Tristan had been worried about that after meeting Kerri, though at that time he was unsure of the boon that tier five would give him. Now he suspected it was the tier that let one reclaim their own essence.

“Got it!” Hadrid said.

Tristan refocused on the experiment. He concentrated his metal sense on the the heart. Then he did something he never had before, he could push his metal sense out a little more than a hundred feet in every direction, but he had never tried to squeeze the sense onto a smaller point to get a clearer picture. When he did he could almost taste the metal at the point of his focus.

The heart was full of metal essence, not surprising as it was what circulated metal essence through his body. He also felt Hadrid with a far narrower beam of focus. Tristan knew that if his range was one hundred feet, then Hadrid’s should be around two hundred twenty-five, that should have given him a very clear picture of what was going on. However that massive range was narrowed down to a far smaller point than he thought was possible.

The only reason he noticed was he could see a narrow stream of growth alloy snaking down towards the heart. It was a wire so small that even with what was essentially a one hundred times magnification, it was difficult to see. So this is what Hadrid meant by focus, if he had used his normal focus, he would have had a better view than Tristan, however, he needed a far narrower view.

Tristan attempted to narrow his focus again. He succeeded but a headache started, after he had shrunk his area to a single square foot. Pushing harder, he halved the area to six square inches. Something snapped, and Tristan staggered back. His metal sense expanded back to its natural state, but the migraine did not leave. He crouched on the balls of his feet and clutched at his head.

Helen had often complained about migraines and explained them as really bad headaches brought on by stress. Tristan had simply written off his mother as weak, unable to push through a simple throbbing pain. She had neglected to tell him that it hurt worse than getting his heart ripped out. Logical as all the pain receptors in the body communicated pain via the brain.

Hadrid chuckled as he watched Tristan writhe on the floor, “You’re a goober, which is a step up from a turd. That is what happens when you overtax your mind.”

Tristan wanted to yell at the alchemist to shut up, but he was sure that yelling would hurt worse than simply letting the man finish. Vulcan was mercifully quiet as well, which Tristan was grateful for, he was not sure he could have taken someone talking directly into his head. It took a good four hours for the pain to fade to tolerable levels, it felt longer, but still, he had more respect for his mother who still did chores while having an episode.

Getting back to his feet Tristan groaned, “That was so much worse than I thought it would be.”

Tentatively Tristan refocused on the heart which was gradually being converted into a brassy red color to his overlapped vision. Focusing caused his headache to intensify, but so long as he did not narrow it past the one foot mark it was bearable. The brass color of alloyed essence slowly spread across the heart.

“How are you spreading the essence through the organ?” Tristan asked unable to see the effect on Hadrid’s point of focus.

“Simple, there is a force called synchronicity, it makes it so that whatever I do to one object also occurs to the paired object. I am simply pairing all the nuclei to affect them all at once. You should be happy that hearts are made out of a single cell type,” Hadrid said.

Twenty minutes later Hadrid was done, he yelled at no one in particular, “ICE BOX NOW!”

He popped open the container, grabbed the heart, and held out a hand. For a second, Tristan thought he wanted his backpack, but like it was choreographed, Ruth stepped into the room and placed a small box into Hadrid’s hand. He placed the heart inside and shut the lid.

Passing off the box to Tristan he said, “I am not a healer, you will need to find someone to heal you. Just sticking the organ back in your chest won’t be good enough.“

“I figured as much,” Tristan said, “Do you know any healers?”

Hadrid nodded, “Every Elder except Forest has one. Henry doubles as his healer and Civil Protector. Don’t take too long the ice box will slow down the heart’s repair, but after the growth force finishes repairing it, the heart will expend all its essence becoming cancerous.”

Tristan nodded, handing the heart back to Hadrid, “I’ll be back in about an hour with that tier eight essence core.”

Hadrid smiled as Tristan left, rubbing his hands together. Tristan was not looking forward to what kind of nightmare machine Hadrid would make with the highly powered core.