Grand Saint Alloy

They arrived back at the mine about a day later, while the sun was rising. The return trip was filled with Tristan testing his new toys on the pinewood forest. Dozens of trees had neatly cut off limbs that would confuse any campers and foresters in the future.

Tristan looked around to see the standard hubbub that had become so reassuring and familiar in the last three years. The mine was bustling with people who were starting their day and several wagons of ingots were being rolled off to Forest Caldera. They would be shipped off to the Stone Caldera to be forged into weapons and armor for the warrior caste.

Grace saw them and smiled, “How was your trip.”

“Have you ever met the alchemist?” Tristan asked.

Grace shuddered, “That bad? He called me a chubby werewolf, can you believe that?”

Tristan had to resist the urge to agree with Hadrid, “He is very rude. But he did make me these.”

He drew the long knife and showed it off to Grace. She inspected the blade for a few minutes before nodding, “Mist does a good job making things, do you mind if I test it out?”

Tristan paused for a moment, before realizing that Hadrid had never given Grace his real name. Mentally rolling his eyes at the man’s antics, Tristan reversed his grip on the blade and handed it to Grace hilt first. She took it and rumbled over to the cutting board where she was currently preparing lunch. There was a cow head on the cutting board and it looked like she was about to pop the skull open to harvest the brain. It was considered a delicacy and she would be saving it for Conni.

Grace chopped at the top of the skull to see how well the knife would hold up. Cow skulls were ludicrously hard, the creatures were considered tier three partly because of this trait. What she did not expect was the knife to cut straight through the skull, through the cutting board, and into the table. It would have kept going to, but the guard stopped it from going any deeper.

“Where can I get one of these, “ Grace asked. The edge was undamaged, despite common sense telling her that it should be warped beyond usability.

“I would go to the alchemist and get one for whatever kern you have,” Tristan had no idea what kind of kern Grace had. He was not sure what the other kinds of artifacts looked like. All the earth ones were made out of a stone or gem like material, and Shadow Fists artifact gloves were made of a material so ethereal that you had to see your hand touching it to know it was there.

Grace sighed, “I don’t think he can do anything with a fire kern, all right, I’ll stop moping. Get going.”

Tristan nodded and left for the bunk house. If he could not be found, the miners would leave a note on his bed to find them underground. Paper was much to precious a resource to waste on a ‘find me later’ note. Instead, Tristan had come up with an idea, each team leader got a stone that was the same color as their essence. Chase for example got piece of granite that Tristan had polished.

The stone he was looking at now was painted red. Red rocks were hard to come across, so Tristan had used some of the red tunnel paint to coat a stone. That would be for a fire kern, and the angry face that was drawn on it meant that it was from Olfred. For a moment Tristan wanted to get angry, Olfred was a piece of work, a lucky piece of work if he already needed Tristan to scan for metal.

He sighed and went down into the mine. In the main room the map had several tokens stuck to the wall to indicate the locations the miners would be working at. He searched for Olfred’s token and found it in a tunnel near the western edge of the mine. Tristan briefly thought about calling Luke, but he was doing something with Kale at the moment. Technically he needed someone with an air kern, but Olfred should have someone.

After hesitating for a minute he left for Olfred’s team. He found them sitting around a pit that looked like an unused fire pit while smoking pipes and eating lunch. He wondered if they had dug the pit for the ambiance or if Olfred was actually dumb enough to light a fire in the mine. Just because a few of the miners had fire kerns did not mean that they were immune to asphyxiation. Thankfully they had remembered the purifier, his air kern was about the only thing that could save them from a fire.

“Oh, our little treasure devil is here!” Olfred yelled when he caught sight of Tristan, “That talent you got me buys a barge full of happy times.”

Tristan was not sure what to say to the obviously intoxicated man, so he went with the simplest option, “You’re welcome?”

Olfred gave him a slightly sloppy grin, “We need you to get us more money, tell us where to dig.”

The man serving as the teams air purifier, waved his hand to clear the smoke away from his face and said, “Olfred, take a seat, I’ll show him the end.”

Tristan could only pity the man. He could not clear out the smoke, with the amount they were putting out. His kern’s only held so much essence after all. The air user would need to save his resources for an emergency. Fortunately for both of them, this tunnel was angled slightly down, letting the smoke flow up the tunnel.

The purifier led Tristan to the end of the tunnel where the shape of Olfred’s previous mining operation could be seen. It was nothing special, but the scorch marks on the dirt were easy so see. It surprised Tristan, he had always assumed Chase and his team of earth kerns would be better at mining, but it seemed that fire had an advantage when actually removing the metal. If someone had a strong enough fire kern, they might be able to simply melt it into a more convenient shape.

He stood in the center of the tunnel and closed his eyes. Tristan had done this many times in the last few years. However, he had never gotten such a fast and odd response. Looking at the left wall, it seemed that there was a very large deposit there.The odd part was that, the sensation flickered. If Tristan focused on it he could no longer feel it, but if he relaxed his senses, it was there clear as day.

He also could not tell how far away it was. Confused, Tristan placed his hand on the wall. It felt close, really close, so why couldn’t he feel it when he focused. He grimaced and drew his knife.

The purifier looked on with rising interest, “Did you find something?”

“Maybe?” Tristan said, then he stabbed the wall.

He was not sure what he expected. A clang, a jolt, what he got was the feeling of striking wood. Roots could go this far down, but that was uncommon. Tristan scraped away the dirt, after clearing about a foot, he found metal. His knife had sunk right into the metal wall like it was a soft wood. Good knife, Tristan thought. Then he looked back at Olfred, lucky moron, he wasn’t even going to have to mine for this one.

“Yes, I guess I did find something,” Tristan said.

A grin spread across the mans face, “glad to hear it.”

The purifier’s smile went rigid when Tristan removed his knife, “What?”

He turned to see what had the purifier so scared. Tristan’s eyes widened as he saw the vertical slit his knife had made in the metal. It was a narrow hole, as the blade’s profile was thin, but it was still wide enough to let some black fog out.

The black vapor did not move quickly, but It did leave Tristan and Olfred’s team with only one choice. They had to get out of the mine before it covered them. There was a slight possibility that it was not poisonous but that was a dumb risk to take. Many miners had decided that they were tough enough to work through a smelly smoke, only to die of asphyxiation.

“I can’t purify it, whatever that stuff is, its not a gas,” the purifier said.

“Can you slow it down?” Tristan asked.

“No, it has no air essence, if I could not see it with my own eyes, I would not believe it was there,” The purifier was starting to hyperventilate, which was not something Tristan was sure they could do.

They ran down the tunnel. Fortunately the black fog only had a paper thin hole to leak out of, so it would not move to fast. Hopefully, Tristan was not sure how that kind of thing worked.

“You find the good stuff,” Olfred yelled as they ran past.

“Black fog, run fast we need to get Siren,” Tristan yelled as he ran past. He could only think that the fog was dark based, not air based, and he could think of no one better to handle a dark fog underground than their resident dark and earth kern warrior. Tristan got to the surface before the purifier and reminded himself to thank Luke for making him run every morning.