Grand Saint Alloy

“We need to save Elder Forest,” Elder Lake said.

“Why would we trade lives for that dirtbag,” Tristan said. He had been having a splendid day. Janis had asked him to rejoin the guard, so he was back in the gold and blue.

He had originally wanted to reject the invitation until Janis came clean with the reasoning. The royal guard had been spying on him and noticed his ability to heal quickly. He had also been on the receiving end of what Tristan could do, so when he found out that Siren had gotten stronger and that Cole was slightly unstable, he wanted someone in the room who could stall them. Janis was at least wise enough to know that he could not stop Blacklake’s poison and Siren and Cole’s brute force.

Tristan had originally been resistant to the idea. Being a royal guard was a little better than being a well-paid babysitter, except he was not getting paid. Janis had tried to pay in money, but parces came easily with the architect force. Tristan had demanded alchemy resources, not really even knowing what those resources were.

Janis’s only exposure to alchemy was ‘fluffy’, the ridiculous name of Luke’s pet. So he had jumped to the conclusion that Tristan needed mythical beasts. A sentiment that was not completely inaccurate. So when he offered Tristan an artificial artifact that would give him access outside the ramparts and react when near a warrior safe house he accepted.

Looking back he was no longer sure why he had accepted. Escaping the caldera should be easy, especially now that he was tier four. Still, a promise was a promise. He would babysit for the time being. That did not mean he had to passively babysit.

“He is nothing more than a self-centered jerk,” Tristan finished.

“Eve, please keep your subjects under control,” Elder Lake said, not even glancing at Tristan, “As I was saying, we need to rescue the Elder, or at least stop the Lord of the Underworld from being the one to kill him.”

“I don’t get it,” Siren frowned, “Dead is dead, and while I don’t think he deserves death, I don’t see why he’s worth the risk.”

Tristan did. It was one of the benefits of growing up in the head family. Eve most likely thinking the same thing. Leaders loved a good scapegoat, all their sins and mistakes could be piled upon one person, and annulled with the punishment of that person. Tristan was willing to bet that Elder Forrest had used Shadow Fist as a scapegoat after Tristan was sent to the mine. It was the only way there would be any benefit to erasing Tristan’s existence.

It would also explain why Shadow Fist was so quick to betray Elder Forest, while at the same time sending the rest of his family to the River Caldera. He knew he had an opportunity and that violence would come to the Forrest Caldera, so he got his wife and daughter to relative safety while taking revenge on his brother-in-law.

“Shadow Fist and Guider Daphan both have the good of the Forest Caldera,” Eder Lake paused at a muttered ‘heretic bastard’ from the local guider, “Anyway, the two of them have done a good job of swaying public opinion against their elder. It would have been more difficult for them if you three had killed more than a handful of human soldiers at the Stone Caldera.” He glared at Blacklake, Siren, and Cole, “He has been set up as a villain, and all the Elders as a suppressive force.”

“But you are?” Everyone turned towards Tristan, “What?”

“Sage,” Eve said, she looked angry, “You are here to stop any violence that would start, until then hold your tongue.”

Tristan frowned. He nodded, somewhat confused. Meetings like this were foreign to him, he had never been in a room where dissenting voices were disdained, and the value of information presented was determined by social status. It was the life that he would have led with any other type of kern, and it was one he was glad he avoided.

“Yes, ma’am,” Tristan said with a nod.

Elder Lake glared at Tristan for a few moments, “As I was saying, we can’t let all that ill will that Elder Forest has accrued be converted into goodwill for the Lord of the Underworld. Blacklake give us your take on the situation.”

“As I see it, there are three problems, Guider Daphan, Shadow Fist, and Elder Forest. If it were a perfect world, Siren would kill the fallen elder, harvesting a portion of that goodwill for himself. Sage over here would then murder, or at least take credit for the murder of Elder Daphan and Shadow Fist. They are using religious fervor to rile up the population, and it would not be difficult to play the narrative that the second coming of the grand ancestor is fighting against the second coming of a demon lord.” Blacklake looked at Tristan, “You would have to take the fall for the Caldera’s salvation.”

Tristan kept his mouth shut. Would he be willing to kill his father and Daphan to keep the Caldera safe? The Caldera did not hold some special place in his heart, and he wanted to hate his father. Now faced with the opportunity to kill him, the anger he had simply felt petty. Sure, he would still break the man’s nose for emotionally abusing Helen, but even after everything he did not believe he could be party to his father's murder.

Blacklake raised an eyebrow at Tristan’s hesitation, “The alternative is war in the streets. Did you know that there is a little boy named Terry here? His parents just moved here, Chase and Sun-Set, I believe. These are the people who will be fighting. There is nowhere to retreat, if this city is attacked, it will be our last stand. So it is not a question of whether or not you will kill someone, it is a question of who you want to kill.”

Tristan frowned. If he had not been privy to an almost identical discussion between Luke and Eve he might not have had a response. This was a false dichotomy, similar to the one Eve was given between her friends and her grandfather. It had shaken her, she was not accustomed to death. Tristan was different, not in the sense that he was more accustomed to human death, he had not killed many people and all of them had been in self-defense. No, the difference was their worldview, he cut the world into the correct shape, while she grew it into the correct one.

He had come to learn that it was a spectrum. One had to grow to have material to cut, while trees eventually needed to be pruned. Did his father need to go, probably, but the answer was not necessarily to kill him. Tristan wondered if the abuse of his potential reputation had been the catalyst for Hadrid’s insanity.

“No,” Tristan said simply, getting another frown from Elder Lake.

“No?” Blacklake said, he sounded confused, “You would rather sacrifice a friend than a foreign politician?”

Tristan was confused, did the man not know that Shadow Fist was his father? Sure the records were blank, but he only needed to ask any of the people in the room to find out. Kerri was at the sifting, Siren had trained him, and Eve was also aware. There were a multitude of other people who knew, a good portion of the miners, the Golden Hearts, and all the Elders.

“You did not have time to do anything more than legal research, did you?” Elder Lake asked.

“I am not trying to assassinate him, why would more be necessary? Sage has several notations of savagery, a brutal fighting style that killed two of Regis’s squad in the plains, and he already has shown aggression towards Shadow Fist in the past, what more information could be valuable?” Blacklake looked from person to person, realizing he had missed something both important and obvious.

“Shadow Fist is his dad,” Kerri said.

Blacklake nodded, “Alright, we can still work with that, we just need you to take the fall for it.”

“No,” Tristan said, “You’re not killing him.”

“I did not say you had to be willing,” Blacklake said, “However, I did say this was in a perfect world, it is not that world.”

Eve stepped in, “I think that killing Shadow Fist would be a waste. He knows the fortress over the mine and we need a contained space to activate the capsule.”

“So capture and interrogation,” Blacklake mused, “We could actually fuse the stories, Shadow Fist only has to be known as dead. You can handle him right?”

Tristan nodded, “I could handle him at tier two, so now it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“How will we make it known that he was the one who pulled off the kidnapping?” Elder Lake asked.

“Give me a day or two to make a mess of the city,” Tristan shrugged, “Unless the Lord of the Underworld shows up, I should be able to handle it.”

That statement made Elder Lake uncomfortable, “You could not make a mess of a whole city militia alone could you.”

Tristan nodded, “Most of the tier two and three were drafted, I should have at least two tiers on most of the people there.”

Tristan was not comfortable killing his father. However, the idea of beating the daylights of him, shoving him in a bag, and running off with him, sounded like a great time.