Grand Saint Alloy

Cohesion. So that was the force the grand ancestor had. If it could make shadows solid, then maybe an engineer could get some use out of it. While that was great for Siren it made Tristan feel a little replaceable. It was kind of his thing to make tool constructs. They walked back to the boats slowly. Siren was not back to one hundred percent yet, and Tristan still had a limp.

The plan was to get Bruce and Eve a force as well, but Tristan had used the two healing reservoirs meant for them on himself. Not that he regretted it. He could always make more.

“Hey Vulcan, what did the people in the other plane use cohesion for?” He asked.

There was silence. He waited a few moments and tried asking again. Still nothing. Frowning he summoned the lamp post. It hurt, as his kern was not fully reconstructed yet. The now familiar weight of the lamp post fell into his palm. It had a shaft made of black metal and a glass container on top that held the flame, despite that fact, it ignored the glass.

It had changed. Silver fissures ran down the shaft and the fire had taken on a metallic sheen. Normally a cracked weapon would make it unusable, but Tristan was sure that he would be unable to bend a tier fifteen string, so the integrity of the lamp was not in any danger. The person inside it was hurt though.

Tristan remembered what it was like to pull foreign essence in from an elemental. Its soul had waged a war on his own, and thankfully his had been stronger. It appeared that Vulcan had done something similar thing with Tristan. He could not be sure, but he believed that Vulcan was fighting Tristan’s memories for dominance.

When he started on that hair-brained venture, he had assumed the only person to be hurt was him. Vulcan had seemed larger than life, and if he still had a body, the situation would have been trivial. He was a peak tier fifteen, mere tier six dissonance would not be enough to even slow him. Now, he was vulnerable, all because Tristan had not listened. To make it worse, he would have died without Vulcan’s interference.

Grimacing, Tristan dismissed the artifact back to the primordial realm. There was nothing he could do. He would just have to let the artifact rest and make do with constructs. Not that he needed a staff to compete with the caldera’s elite before, but now that he had effectively consumed a field of tier-six essence his growth had been ridiculous.

He inspected his kern to find a new force, one he had always wanted, yet was also not useful at the current time. Infusion. Yes, every tier four could move their essence into another object, though this had limited practical effects. It was not as if Siren moving earth essence into a sword would give it stone properties, while if he pushed it into the dirt at his feet it would bear his weight more easily. It simply allowed a person to reinforce their own element, and supply resources to anything that consumed it. Like Luke's protein shake.

Infusion allowed Tristan to bend those rules. He could give a rock healing properties, though it would still need to be ingested. He could infuse a bubble of air with the architect force to make it ridged and hold its shape, though it would be brittle and would not move with him. It would be useless in fighting the Lord of the Underworld, but it would streamline alchemy.

There was one more concern. It was on the list of forces that Hadrid had been in possession of. That explosion had been at tier six, and Hadrid was on the edge of the heroic tiers. Did he eat the essence that was once in the alchemist’s kern? He knew he had been consuming a dormant soul every time he ate a reservoir, but he did not know those people. It was a very different feeling when he knew the person.

Someone slowed down so they could walk beside him, “So how far into tier four did you make it?”

Tristan looked a Luke in surprise, “How can you tell?”

Tristan could normally guess a tier by a person’s posture and equipment. He had still missed Herod in a group of tier threes simply because he did not advertise himself. Currently, he was hunched over and had a tattered tunic on, nothing to say this is a tier four.

“You got something similar to my conductivity, and you did not replace any body parts to achieve it,” Luke said.

Infusion was similar to conductivity. The difference was one was about moving essence through an object while the other was about storing it inside an object. The similarity made Tristan wonder if it was possible to fuse or upgrade essences to higher forms. The book on forces he had did not mention anything, but it was also not designed for anyone in the higher tiers of the world.

“Yes, infusion,” Tristan said.

“Wasn’t that,” Luke looked back at the crater, “Bro, did you eat Hadrid?”

He started laughing. Tristan had been worried that Luke would have been angry about Hadrids death, but he did not seem to care overly much about it. Hadrid must not have been a beloved mentor figure then.

“You did what?” Eve said, both concerned and horrified.

“I didn’t,” Tristan tried to defend himself, but Luke betrayed him.

He tossed Eve a reservoir, and between laughs, he said, “He eats these, they’re souls.”

Eve’s face paled, “Didn’t you feed Siren one of those?”

Tristan glared at Luke, “It’s not that big of a deal. All artifacts are souls wrapped around essence, and we have no issue with absorbing them. All of you have eaten at least a few.”

“How have we not known about this?” It was Bruce this time, and he looked concerned.

“First because it’s not very important information, and second you would need to process an elemental to prove the theory. The Temple does that, and it is why all their acolytes are armed,” Tristan explained.

They arrived at the boats. There were quite a few of them, several people in blue uniforms with gold half plate rushed over. Tristan recognized Janis and Herod, along with the two healers. He inspected other people, there were several warriors, but most seemed to be a scavenging team. Tristan realized that with the fire mostly gone, Elder Lake had seen fit to start looting the ruin of Alchehall. They were late to get anything enhanced with essence, but there were plenty of dead mercenaries wearing mundane armor and wearing coin pouches.

“Lady Eve, please do not disappear like that in the future. It makes it very difficult to protect you,” Janis said with a bow.

“Thank you, Janis,” Eve said, “I will try to inform you in the future.”

Janis appeared to have more to say, the man was irritated, but he took up his position with Eve. Herod was quite a bit less discreet, he folded his arms and stared at Eve.

“What could possess you to run off like that? Our lives are attached to yours, don’t forget that,” Herod scolded, “Your grandfather needs to know his last granddaughter is safe, so if you won’t do this for us, do it for him.”

Eve flushed and looked to the ground. Tristan patted her on the shoulder, which only succeeded in turning Herod’s ire to him, “You are a bad influence, you should stay away.”

Unlike Eve, Tristan did not feel bad about ignoring Herod, “Maybe, but I’m better protection.”

Before Herod could respond, Tristan turned and hobbled after Luke and Siren. They were leaving and Tristan had no desire to be stuck on this side of the lake. Rowing would be borderline impossible in his current state. The rowboat dropped dangerously close to the water line with both Tristan and Siren inside. Both weighed as much as two normal men, and this boat had only been designed for three people.

“Shouldn’t we take Frank’s ferry back to him, it can carry more weight,” Tristan said.

“No,” Luke said, almost sounding offended, “That greedy bastard will demand some silver or an artifact, I am not paying that.”

Siren nodded, “Luke still owes him some money from when he was unable to pay a few weeks ago.”

Luke grumbled inaudibly to himself while he rowed. Despite being tier five, it still took him quite some time to get across the lake. Tristan decided to use the time to speed up the reconstruction of his kern. Vulcan had told him that prayers, chants, and songs would speed up essence recovery, especially if it was to a god of the same essence type.

It did make the Temple seem more logical. People would reap a tangible benefit from following them, though he was unsure of what the high tier beings got out of the relationship. It had to be good for them to bother.

As all the gods were dead, Tristan hummed an undirected tune. It only sped things up marginally, but it was worth it if he could get back in fighting shape a minute sooner.