Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan immediately went to the training field where Siren was giving the warriors a workout. Though beating might have been a better description. Tristan could now see why Kale had taken Luke aside to assist them.

Siren had one warrior in a red circle of stones that was about eight feet wide. Two wooden tables simulated walls and Tristan realized they were the lunch tables that Grace served meals on. The man in the center had to face off against two other warriors who were free to leave the circle and Luke was walking around the ring as well.

They all had padded sticks and from what Tristan could tell the rules were very simple. Don’t leave the circle, don’t get hit, and hit everyone but Luke. You could only hit Luke on a riposte. This seemed to be simulating the fight with the two water elementals, They had no mid tier fours so two mid tier threes stood in for it. Luke represented the water and dark elemental they needed to be prepared for, as the dark elementals were boarder line invisible in shadows.

Truthfully, the drills did not seem to have much practical use outside of the tunnel system. Fortunately, that is where they would be needing them. Tristan waved at Siren, it took a few moments and yells to get the warriors attention. When he did, Siren called a halt to the drill and told his men to squat until he was done.

He jogged over with a curious Luke following him, “What’s the matter?”

Tristan explained the situation and how it was time sensitive, but probably not urgent. He was thinking of some kind of excuse for him stabbing a wall, when there was no real reason to do so. In hindsight it was a dumb move, however Tristan paused when Siren started laughing.

“YES!” He pumped his fist into the air, “Kid, I could hug you right now.”

Tristan looked at Sirens well armored body and took a step back. Getting a hug from him would be like being placed into a trash compactor, his tier zero body would not hold up well. He looked quizzically at Siren, the man was approachable, but he had never acted like a kid before.

“Isn’t the black fog a bad thing?” Tristan asked.

Siren was catching his breath, “Probably not, but where else have you seen a black fog.”

Tristan searched his memories. He had not seen any fog black or otherwise in years. Thinking back he realized there was a time he had seen a black fog and that was one of his worst memories.

“The abyssal chalice?” It had black fog, Sai had been black in the vision and so were most of the surroundings. He wondered if everything was black because that was the color it really was, or because that was the color of dark essence. Then came a second though, “You think that we have a powerful artifact on our hands?”

Siren nodded, “Yes, and better yet its one that I can probably use.”

Tristan could not help get exited. If it was a tier four artifact, then Siren could use it to get into tier four himself. He would be the highest tiered person in the Caldera. Hadrid’s image went through his head and Tristan mentally cursed, Siren would still be a tier and a half behind the alchemist. He would have to find a lot more artifacts to feed to Siren.

Siren eyed the knives at Tristan’s waste, “you said that those can cut through metal right?”

Tristan nodded, “Yes, why.”

“If we aren’t positioned against a doorway, I would like to cut a hole in the wall,” He said. It would save a lot of time if they did not need to melt their way through with fire artifact or cut through with the circular saw. The speed it offered allowed for safer tactics. The knives also would not create an environmental hazards if there were any light or fire elementals that could use the heat created against them.

Tristan gave his approval, anything that made Siren’s life easier, “What do we do about the fog?”

“Light essence is extremely good at removing dark essence, to the point that light essence can be multiple tiers lower and still be effective,” Siren said.

Tristan supposed that made sense, no matter how dark it was, a candle never struggled to spread its light. Unless there was something in the air, like a fog. Then the light would have to shine even brighter to be seen.

Conni was notified and a group was organized to go down into the tunnels. Tristan tried his best to get on the team, however, Siren shot his proposal down. He had a weak body and a weak kern, the only thing he could add was his weapons. The weapon that would actually be better used in someone else’s hands. Tristan was grumpy, but there was not much of an argument that he could use to oppose Siren’s logic.

The most frustrating part was that Luke was going. Luke was the strongest purifier in the camp, though it was not much of a competition. His physique was just as good as the soldiers which put him somewhere around tier three. They needed at least one purifier and he was the best choice.

“Good luck,” Tristan said as he handed his knives over. A day after he got back and he wasn’t even the first person to use his new tools.

Luke grinned and handed back the sword breaker, “Thanks,” then he leaned in a little closer, “I just want to let you know, stabbing walls is not a good idea.”

Tristan groaned, he had hoped Luke had forgotten about that. He stood by one of the bunk houses and watched the dozen or so people gather. Siren and his six warriors were forming the vanguard, in a ‘v’ formation. The four light kern illuminators were nestled inside the formation along side Luke.

They were going down there with quite a bit of fire power. Most of the warriors were holding lighting artifacts in one hand, and had weapons in their other. He looked down at the glow stone he was holding in his hand. Tristan had filched a few of them after offering to help the party gather the necessary resources. If anything bad happened to Luke, he intended to go down and pull him out.

For now, there was nothing that he could do. So he walked out of the camp and looked for a suitable tree. They were all pine trees, but they would still work. Luke had shown him some movements to use with knives. He was skeptical of them actually being for combat, as they were very flamboyant and required a ludicrous amount of fine muscle control. Tristan’s current thought was they were for gaining the prerequisite skills to effectively use a knife.

He found two branches and quickly sliced them of. Despite the sword breaker not being made for cutting, it was still sharp enough to preform the task beautifully. Tristan stripped the branch and set about whittling them down into the rough shape of his two knives. It was more difficult than he thought, he had whittled before, every boy has tried their hand at it. The issue was, his knife was so sharp, it felt like he was whittling a block of butter.

Around an hour and twenty branches later he had his two wooden knives. They were rough, but he did not care, he was not going to spend any more time getting pine sap all over himself just to get some better sticks. He ended up with two pieces of wood shaped roughly like his knives. Oddly the wood was actually heavier than the metal.

After cleaning the sap off with some dust, he headed back to the mine entrance. Tristan may not be allowed to enter the mine, however he would keep an eye on it. He started practicing what he could only call a blade dance in slow motion.

It did not take long for his arms to start burning. The slower one practiced a martial art the more control it required. In the beginning Tristan had doubted the efficacy of the practice, after all it did not cause him to bulk up like a lot of the miners did. Luke had laughed and told him that with a tier zero kern his strength and speed would be like a liability in most conflicts. Every tier one would be half again better at the same fitness level, so his technique needed to be superior.

Chase was standing with Sun Set, watching the entrance of the tunnel. The two had gotten close over the last few years. It was one of those situations where everyone but them understood the direction their relationship was heading. Tristan did not pay much attention to the couple, he was focused completely on his movements.

That was until Sun Set yelped and Chase yelled, “Get back.”

Tristan looked up to see Chase hauling Sun Set away from the tunnel. His eyes focused on something leaking out of it. The black fog was rising from the entrance and it had brought something with it. At first Tristan thought it was an elemental, but it was a jelly like creature made of a smoky material with a brain and eyes floating inside it.