Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan and Luke had to beg to be left at the tunnel. Siren was not terribly keen on letting two teens stand around a potentially dangerous location. However a combination of promises to stay out of the way and the irritating aura needy children emit, wore the old warrior down. They could stay, but they would have to wait at the tunnels first bend. It gave them a poor view, but it was still a view.

“So, do you think there will be treasure,” Luke was bouncing up and down in excitement.

“Maybe, it is in good condition, after all. The owner could have lived long enough to create an artifact,” Tristan answered, “I hope we get to see Siren fight an elemental.”

“That would be awesome, I want to see a fire elemental, or maybe a wind one.”

“Wind is see through, wouldn’t a wind elemental just be invisible?” Tristan asked.

Luke shrugged, he had never seen an elemental before. Their bantering was interrupted when Siren yelled, “civilians, stay back, warriors get ready.”

He hefted a large stone tool, it was an extremely high tier artifact, maybe even tier four. It had a circular blade made out of diamond with razor sharp teeth edging the circumference. There was one handle off to the side of the blade and one at the rear to help stabilize the tool. Siren had to lean back to retain his balance and he yelled “Clear!” Before starting.

The blade started spinning and when it was placed against the door Tristan expected it to slice right through. However, whatever metal this was resisted the blade causing sparks rained down on the ground. Siren made slow progress through the hinges of the door. Fifteen minutes later both hinges were cut in two and lying in the dirt.

“Pry bar,” Siren held out his hand and one of his warriors handed him a long piece of metal which was flattened on one end.

Siren slammed it into the edge of the door wedging it where it met the frame. He then held it stable while one of his warriors held a maul like a regular hammer and started hammering the pry bar like a nail. Once it was in far enough, Siren stepped back and drew out a razor net, he got ready to throw it while one of his men pried the door open.

As soon as a crack was visible one of the men on the pry bar yelled, “No glow, No fog.”

Tristan was not aware of what that meant. However, the lack of an environmental effect did not mean the interior was vacant. He breath caught when something reached out of the widening crack and attempted to steal the pry bar. Whatever it was, it was not well endowed in the friction department as the bar easily slid out of its grip.

“Water elemental,” one of the pry bar crew yelled.

The door was then shoved the rest of the way open. What had taken two tier threes and a pry bar took the water elemental a single hand. As half the door, the part that normally opened was still buried in the wall, it took a few moments for the piece of metal to be pushed away. What stepped out was nothing like the elemental Tristan had been expecting.

He had believed that it would be a swirling mass of liquid with arms and legs with malevolent red glowing eyes. Instead it was a heart with a rib cage of ice enclosing it. Blood vessels and arteries spread from the heart cover the rest of the body. If Tristan had been better versed in anatomy he would have recognized a human circulatory system that was both made of and carried water in place of blood. The entire creature was held upright by an ice skeleton.

Steam wafted up from its bones from the difference in temperature between itself and the air. It took one step out, Tristan expected Siren to immediately throw the net, but he took a step back as well. The elemental had its eyes locked, not on Siren, but on one of his warriors. If he remembered correctly, this man had a water kern. Maybe elementals used their own specific type of essence to see.

The elemental took two more steps toward the warriors before Siren shouted, “Its a tier four, on my mark.”

The elemental flinched as if noticing Siren for the first time. Tristan sighed with relief, it was not some tier seven monster. The tiers were a human made convention for quantifying essence control. It was a geometric increase of fifty percent with every tier, however the difference between a peak tier three like Siren and a crippled tier four like the elemental was actually very low. The gap was further reduced by Siren’s obvious skill to the point that he was probably a match for the elemental.

Tristan then learned how dangerous elementals actually were. Siren was just as dangerous as the elemental, but he was also easier to injure. The elemental dashed forward leaving its cloud of steam behind, exposing its frozen bones.

Siren threw the razor net, which the elemental did not even register until it collided with the weapon. It tore apart the vessels on the elemental, but did nothing to the bones. The water elementals jaws opened in a silent scream as water sprayed everywhere. The scene would have been gruesome if the creature had blood instead of water.

The net was torn apart and it kept moving towards Siren, though substantially slower. Siren drew two short hafted mauls from his belt and got to work. He skillfully evaded the claws of the elemental and beat on it with his weapons. Where the net was useless against the bones, the mauls were a different story.

All of the warriors took turns hammering on it. Its focus would change with every blow, and as soon as it turned to attack the one who had just struck it, another maul or hammer would strike it in the back. Its icy body held up admirably, healing at a visible speed. Losing its skull did not even slow it down.

The elemental got a strike off on one of Siren’s warriors, breaking a few of the man’s ribs, but it cost it a blow to the hip. Once the elemental could no longer stand, the four remaining men beat on it like miners. The ice ribs were smashed, however the bones did not stop reforming until the heart was smashed.

“That was awesome,” Tristan whispered

Luke nodded his eyes wide, “I want to do that.”

Siren was breathing heavily. The earth essence running through him made him quite a bit stronger than other tier threes, and the dark essence boosted his perception, the combination was truly formidable in this environment. It did not stop him from missing what happened next.

Siren looked at his injured man who was leaning against the wall wincing with every breath, “You alright?”

The warrior gritted his teeth, “Yeah, boss, just cracked some ribs, I’ll hea-“

A black spike was shoved through the man’s chest. Something grabbed the mans head from behind and tore it off. A second elemental was revealed to be standing behind them, and this one lacked the clumsy motions of the first one. It was identical except the liquid flowing through its exposed vessels was a darker color.

Tristan cringed at the sight of the deceased man’s body being torn apart. The elemental threw the body at Siren who quickly dodged it. Then the fight restarted with a few major differences. First this elemental’s circulatory system was completely undamaged and second, it was not just a water elemental. Every time the shadows covered a part of its body, it disappeared, which was why Siren had missed it.

One man tried to smash it with a maul only for his weapon to be caught in a single hand before it was wrenched away and thrown at another warrior. While that one was occupied it lunged at Sired, getting a maul to the jaw for its troubles. The spiderweb of cracks were healed almost immediately. The abundance of dark essence in the mine made its healing ability leagues better than its companion.

As if its brain was not attached to its legs, the elemental stomped on the first warrior’s knee and shunted the fourth’s maul off to the side while taking Siren’s blow on its empty skull. The one who had a maul thrown at him managed to get a blow with a heavy wind up off. The elemental was strong not heavy, so it was thrown down the hall, bouncing off the door.

Siren dragged the warrior with the broken leg away and yelled at the other two, “Bury the forsaken thing.”

The last two functional subordinates smashed the side of the tunnel, sending cracks up the sides, a second strike and flakes started falling. The elemental scrambled to its feet with a hiss and darted towards the party on all fours like a dog. Fortunately for Siren, that was when the roof started to collapse.

A large rock crushed its head, but it did not seem to need that. The body was stopped when the roof caved in, all at once ,burying it. Siren collapsed onto his butt and his men did the same. They were breathing heavily, trying to compute what just happened.

One of the warriors looked over at Siren, “What tier do you think that one was?”

Siren shook his head, still gasping for breath, “Still a four, just an uninjured one.”