Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan stared in, well he wasn’t sure. Terror, shock, awe, something in between. Currently he was staring at the largest woman he had ever seen. While the lunch lady, maybe lunch beast was the right word. She was about six feet tall and extremely obese, she most likely a hundred pounds heavier than any of the men. If that were all, than Tristan wouldn’t have given a second thought, however the woman had brown bob cut and what Tristan had first taken to be a bear pelt on her arms and legs. No, she was wearing a short sleeve tunic and a skirt that cut off at mid calf, the lunch beast was really that hairy.

Tristan glanced at Luke out of the corner of his eye, he was in shock to. The woman saw them and smiled as she rumbled over. Tristan inwardly hoped that she would eat Luke first, because he still could not run with his injured lung.

Luke pointed and asked, “So, are you a werewolf?”

All the people gathering for lunch froze, the woman froze, Tristan took a step away from Luke. He had been thinking the same thing, but he wasn’t going to say it out loud. Then a laugh started behind them, which quickly spread to everyone else, even the werewolf, er woman.

Tristan turned in time to see Conni throw one arm over each of their shoulders, “I see you met my wife, her name is Grace, and let me tell you she makes the best food.”

Tristan could only nod meekly as he was led to a table filled with sweaty, heavily muscled men. Fortunately, with a few exceptions, working in the mines resulted in wiry muscles instead of bulky ones. If everyone had been a broad shouldered brute then there would have been no space for Luke and Tristan. With all the miners above ground, Tristan was surprised at how few of them there were.

The Forest caldera’s population was split into four different castes. A worker caste, a management caste, a warrior caste, and the guiding caste. No caste was more or less important, instead their relative value to the community was used to give them status. That value was determined by how easy a person was to replace. A guider and a warrior were very difficult to replace, while a farmer could be replaced by anyone, and the farther you went down any caste system the more people you would find at the bottom, supporting the structure.

That was what confused Tristan, the mine was quite literally as low as you could go. It was so easy to replace each worker that he assumed there would be hundreds of people here. Instead there was only about fifty, excluding the cook. The simplest way to find out was to just ask, so he looked around for someone who looked nice, but found no one.

Tristan realized that his definition of nice might need some renovation. All the men around him were waiting impatiently for food. They were sweaty, most weren’t wearing shirts, and their hair and beards were unkept, they looked like heavily muscled vagrants. Being part of the management caste, Tristan was used to hygiene being a higher priority, but he wasn’t really part of that caste anymore, he was a crippled worker.

He picked the man across from him, “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

The man‘s eyes shifted from the huge pot where some kind of thick soup was being ladled into bowls. He had a bushy blond beard and the hair on his head was braided in rows. He didn’t answer, so much as give an affirming grunt of approval.

“Why are there so few miners,” Tristan asked, “It seems odd that such a low caste job has so few people.”

The man snorted at the low caste comment, “Boy, first of all, your in the same caste as me, and second because we don’t want to die.”

Tristan’s eyes went wide. Overpopulation in the cave system could be dangerous. He was glad he found out about this early, maybe stampedes or maybe a lack of breathable air. Tristan shuddered at the thought.

The miners neighbor jabbed him in the ribs, “Carl! You scared the poor boy.”

Carl grunted, he obviously did not care much, however the man who had jabbed him was one of Siren’s warriors. Sighing he once again focused on Tristan, “Have they told you about the elementals?” Tristan nodded, “Well imagine a tier six or seven elemental rampaging through a group of terrified miners, some of which also spawn elementals upon death.”

Carl jabbed a thumb at the warrior, “These turds can kill a tier seven if they work together, but not if it has friends. If it escaped the mine and attacked a city it has the potential to start a chain reaction that spawns an elemental lord.”

Tristan was not sure if that was a different type of elemental or simple what one called the head of a swarm of them. Whatever the case, Tristan could easily see it wiping out the whole caldera. It was an elemental plague.

The food was handed out in bowls made of red fired clay. Tristans senses alerted him to some metal essence in the red substance, however the thought was brief as Grace was the one handing him the bowl. She caught his hand as he reached for it twisting his wrist so that his palm was up. Tristan almost panicked, but she simply placed a brown object in his hand.

Grace leaned down and whispered into his ear, “Eat first, you don’t want to take the alchemist’s wind root on an empty stomach, don’t let the men know you have it they’ll make a drug out of it.”

She placed the bowl on top of the object that Tristan now knew was a root, before rumbling down the table to hand out more food. The food was a white soup, thick with vegetables and a surprising amount of meat. Tristan had never lacked for good food, his parents were at the top of the manager caste. They were responsible for city development which gave them ample resources for consumption.

This food looked barely passable, however the taste was surprisingly good. All the miners were chowing down, almost as if they were racing. A thought that was soon proven true when a man bolted to his feet yelling “SECONDS! Please.”

Tristan gulped it down quickly, it was more than enough to feed his growing body. Mining evidently burned more calories than growing did. Normally he would have taken his time and enjoyed his food, but he needed to eat the root before it was taken from him. He scooped the last bit out with a wooden spoon and sighed.

“So, that was good,” Luke said, he leaned over and looked at what Tristan was holding, “Hey is that an Wind Tuber?”

Things escalated and deescalated quickly. Carl’s eyes dilated, and he lunged across the table. The warrior tried to grab him, but caught the heel of Carl’s boot in the nose. He came like a wild animal, scrambling with such fervor that the man to Tristan’s left fell out of his chair and scrambled backward.

“Give me it,” Carl rasped like some sort of ghoul, “Or I’ll hurt you.”

Tristan wasn’t given much of a choice as Carl tackled Tristan. He tried to eat the root before the psycho could get it, but he was both to week and to slow. Tristan tried to punch him, but his untrained fist was useless. He had seen how people reacted to drugs before and this was more akin to a possession than a withdrawal.

His lungs hurt, he couldn’t breath. Coughing up a mouthful of blood, he prepared to be killed by Carl. At the last moment, a hand reached around the deranged miner’s face and grabbed him by the nose. Blood splattered Tristan’s face, and then Carl’s screams of desire turned to pain.

It took a moment for Tristan to realize that the hand hadn’t grabbed Carl’s nose. His savior was holding a spoon, which had been shoved through the man’s eye socket. The miner was wrenched off Tristan by his eye socket and Tristan saw his savior. Luke had just attacked Carl.

Luke was half Carl’s mass, but with the spoon as a lever he pulled the man down to his level and drew a broken piece of pottery across his jugular. Tristan watched in horror as Carl jerked back pulling the spoon out and staggered back holding his neck. No one tried to help him, everyone was more fixated on the green eyed boy who had just killed a man.

After a moment of silence Luke looked over a Tristan, “So, you gonna eat that?”

Tristan blankly shook his head. He was not doing to disappoint a boy who had just killed a man.

Luke shrugged, “So, I’m going to borrow your spoon, mine needs to be washed.”