Grand Saint Alloy

Rage filled Tristan. Now that he was no longer focused on Shadow Fist, he could feel the artifact sword that Regis normally used. He could also feel the full suit of tower plate. They had planned this, before ever arriving.

It was logical. Shadow Fist was political, Regis was military, and Tristan had attacked their city. In hindsight, that message had been stupid, a boyish desire to build a bridge. The upside was he now had someone to take his anger out on.

Vulcan was summoned as the roof exploded. Tristan had never used the artifact to his full capacity. The way Tristan normally used it would lead people to assume that teleportation was Vulcan's only ability. It was just a standard ability that all soul tools shared. Vulcan was a tier fifteen reservoir of flame and metal with the forces of gravity, adamance, and combustion.

A plate of adamant enforced metal formed under his feet. He shot up into the air like a cork from a bottle. Mentally he heard a groan, it was pained. Tristan’s anger was immediately dowsed. Did he hurt Vulcan? Should he stop? Escaping would not be an issue, but he could not win if he was planning on holding back.

There were no words, just pain, a desperation to remain conscious, and an image. Tristan had trouble seeing it through the tiredness and pain, but an image of a brackish pond with a dam at one end came into view. The dam was shattered allowing the dirty water to flow out and the river feeding it to replenish the pond with new water.

Tristan understood. The benefit of communicating mentally was that intent was always baked into the message. Tristan needed to empty Vulcan so he could refill with pure essence from the Primordial Realm. Only that would not happen in a single day, Vulcan had over one hundred times the essence reserves and the quality of the forces within were extreme.

“I’ll get you back,” Tristan muttered.

Armor imbued with adamance coated his body. Gravity dragged it back down. All of this was scaled down to tier four as that was all Tristan could handle, but the result was still cataclysmic. Regis scrambled to get out of the way as Tristan slammed into the, now open, second floor. He was so heavy and moving so fast that he punched straight through the second floor without buckling it.

The impact on the ground floor caused a shockwave that damaged several load-bearing walls. Tristan sent out a pulse of compact metal sense to find the seamstress. She was gone, the narrowed field of his sense would have picked up the iron in her blood even if she were dead.

With his last hesitation gone, Tristan copied Regis. A wave of combustion-imbued flame washed out. The walls caught fire even though they were made of stone. Cursing came from the floor above as Regis decided to bail from the burning building.

Tristan intercepted him on the way down. Gripping Vulcan with both hands, Tristan swung as hard as he could. Regis’s fall was abruptly redirected into the smithy across the street. Now outside the seamstress’s burning home, Tristan found the building surrounded by an assortment of enemies.

Most were human, they were looking between Tristan and the smithy that Regis had yet to exit. None of them seemed like they wanted a fight. The rest of the group was made of various low tier elementals.

“I will burn this whole street in five seconds,” Tristan yelled over the crackling of the bonfire behind him.

The humans took a step backward. Tristan knew some of these people, Keith was in the crowd. He knew some of their families and had no desire to kill them just because his father was a fool.

“One!” He raised the lamppost over his head.

He needed something flashy. A common fire warrior tactic was to compress a flame construct to a single point before releasing it in a massive explosion. It was powerful and looked like a tiny sun. The dissonance Vulcan absorbed gave the flames a metallic hue as Tristan collected the fire.

A ball of roiling golden energy formed above him. Tristan had a thought, did gravity affect fire? Moreover, did adamance? He couldn’t picture adamance and fire working together, but gravity just pushed things down. Not putting any thought into the consequences he applied it to the fire.

“Two,” Tristan yelled.

The compressed orb took on a dark color, looking almost like an eclipse. Wind started to drift towards the point, and the weight of his armor lessened. The fire behind Tristan flickered toward the black construct like it wanted to consume it.

“Three.”

“If you forsaken cowards run, I will gut you!” Regis yelled as he limped out of the wrecked smithy.

So he was not completely healed. Something sharp slid between the joint on his pauldron and armpit. He felt the sharp point prick his skin, but the chain mail he had made stopped the blade from sliding deeper. While turning to confront Shadow Fist, he sent consumption alloy to remove any toxin involved.

Shadow Fist ducked under Tristan’s kick. Catching the foot and throwing it into the air, he sent Tristan flailing to the ground. Tristan was not used to fighting in armor, it slowed him and made him more clumsy in exchange for borderline invulnerability. Regis closed in and swung his black flaming sword at Tristan. There was no way for it to break adamance-laced armor, but he was not going to bet that combustion could not ignite it.

The sword fell and Tristan intercepted it with the eclipsed sun at the tip of the lamppost. The result was immediate as everything the gravity was holding in place was released. Tristan had not known what to expect from a fusion of multiple powerful forces, a bigger boom probably. What he got was both that and nothing like it.

Everything color was drowned by white, as light escaped the construct. Then the tier three artifact Regis held was ripped apart. Not like metal, more like sand, then the force hit. No fire - only pure, oppressive force. If it was standing it was flattened, the flames on the seamstress’s shop were smothered at the building was flattened. Guards were forced down with cries of pain, elementals were snuffed out, and Tristan was pressed down a few inches into the cobblestone street.

The adamance-laced armor handled the blast easily, leaving Tristan mostly unharmed. Regis and the guards had similar luck due to their armor, though they started in a standing position. Most cried out in pain as they clutched at injured legs. Regis could barely move his leg, most likely because of a torn muscle or tendon.

Tearing himself out of the road Tristan could only look around in awe. This was scaled down to his tier. An entire city block had been damaged. Not all of the buildings had collapsed, but all looked ready to be condemned. If he could do this in three seconds as a tier four what could Vulcan do? Tristan remembered the blast that had sheared the top of the mountain they now called home off. His feat was nothing, it was done with help, but one day he would be able to do things like that.

Looking down at his father, Tristan shook his head. He had warned the man, come willingly, or come unwillingly, it did not matter. Shadow Fist was conscious but dazed, his ankle was swelling, whether, from a break or a sprain, Tristan did not know. It would stop him from escaping. He grabbed his father by his arms and made a set of manacle constructs. He did not bother with any specific force, as Shadow Fist could nullify it with consumption over time. What he could do nothing about was a fifty-pound metal brick encasing his hands from the wrists down.

Turning to Regis, he contemplated killing the man. Though he was not sure how long it would take to get through the armor. Just because he was immobile did not make him defenseless. Not that it was an issue, Tristan could just make a large metal construct, set it on top of Regis, and then stab him in the eye with a decay coated needle. Tristan frowned, the ease of it was unnerving, and he was starting to understand the dismissive attitude that the gods showed for their follower’s survival. When the strongest of men was forced to kneel, what did that make their conqueror? Something more than a man.

Regis seemed to read his mind, “Stay away or I’ll combust my own kern.”

Tristan called his bluff, rapping his knuckles on the armor, he said, “Right, this armor was made with the force of adamance, it is harder than tower plate. At worst I’ll have to walk a few feet farther to leave the Caldera.”

Regis’s kern would not generate force as caustic or as powerful as Hadrid’s death. It would be powerful, every fire attuned part of his body would explode. However, every part of him was not enough to scratch force enhanced armor. There was even a chance his tower plate would contain it.

Golden flames started collecting around the ethereal glass frame at the top of the lamppost. Regis seemed to realize that his armor would be just as undamaged as Tristan’s, he tried to stand, but the damaged muscles and heavy armor kept him down.

“Wait, you can’t kill me, I am blessed by the gods,” Regis hissed. Tristan had expected fear, maybe pleading, but not disbelief. The fool really could not understand why this was happening.

He had a good answer, “Four!”

All the guards who weren’t already crawling away began to flee. He did not want to catch them in the blast so he paused for a few seconds. Lacking a fire kern hobbled his innate understanding of flame, so he had no idea how big the blast zone would be.

“I am blessed by the god of Fire! You can’t kill me with fire,” Regis started laughing.

Tristan felt a little pity for the man, he had pushed too hard and shown Tristan another way to use his power. He dipped into his reserves and mixed infusion, consumption, and decay. It did not take long after all the forces of alloy and infusion enjoyed mixing. In the past he had wondered if composite forces were possible, not even realizing that was what the healing force was.

Then he mixed gravity and combustion. No finesse was used, just the brute power that Vulcan brought to bear. This time Tristan utilized the deadly cycle of consumption and decay. He infused the flame with decay alloy. It faded to a dull brown and rippled more like a liquid than like a flame.

“Five,”

Tristan let the condensed decay infuse fire into the prone man. He stared at the result. Combustion made everything barring the armor light on fire, consumption allowed it to eat through things it normally couldn’t, and decay took that fuel and eradicated anything organic. This flame would not run out of power until the combustion force that fed the whole chain was exhausted. Regis did not even have a chance to scream, as the mud colored flames poured through his visor.