Tristan awoke to something poking him in the face. It took him longer than he wanted to admit to realize it was a finger. When he finally opened his eyes to see a pair of copper eyes staring down at him. Then the frame of black hair and then the child’s face. Tristan blinked a few times, the eyes were red now.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to recognize his little sister. Tris smiled and looked over her shoulder, “HE IS ALIVE!”
Tristan braced for the pain that shout would cause to his head. Then he realized, possibly for the first time in his life, that he had gone through something traumatic and did not have a headache. Somewhere else in the building, he heard what sounded like a frightened animal scrambling up the steps. It did not take long for said panicked animal to reach the doorway and reveal itself as Helen.
“Oh, god’s love, you're alive,” Helen said breathing heavily due to heavy emotions.
Tristan said the first thing that came to mind, “Sai’s boss’s uncle killed all three of them.”
Helen didn’t seem to hear, “Are you hungry, is it hurting, how can I help?”
No, he was not hungry, he had just eaten several weeks’ worth of food. His stomach disagreed, it rumbled at the word food, and before he could say anything Helen was gone. She had left Tris behind and he had no idea how to interact with the child, he had been the youngest one in any group that he had been a part of.
She poked him again, and Tristan snapped at her, “Stop.”
“Alright, now that your mom is gone, let's start with the mental test,” Vulcan said.
“Why,” Tristan croaked.
“To see if you are dead,” Tris said.
“To see how bad oxygen deprivation damaged your brain,” Vulcan answered.
He struggled to get into a sitting position, it was hard like he had lost all his strength. When he saw his arms, Tristan realized that might just be the case. No matter how much he exercised or trained, he had never been able to bulk up. Siren was a human tank, made of stone with biceps bigger than most people’s thighs. He hid it well with his combat robes, but the earth kern had done him many favors.
As earth and metal seemed like adjacent elements, Tristan had assumed he could get big like Siren. It should not have come as a surprise that a metal kern came with a wiry build. At least until he met Vulcan. In the vision he was built like Siren, making Tristan believe he just had failed to inherit anything impressive from his parents.
“How many fingers am I holding up,” Vulcan said.
“You don’t have fingers,” Tristan said.
“Yes I do, see,” Tris said, waggling her fingers in Tristan’s face.
“Stop being annoying,” Tristan said trying to wave the little girl away. Even that motion was hard, however dealing with a child would be more exhausting.
“Stop being an eyeball,” Tris shot back.
What, Tristan thought as he frowned down at the child, “No, I meant to get off the bed and leave the room.”
Tris ignored him and said, “My dad is forty-three, he’s older than you are.”
This was going nowhere, so he decided to block her high pitched voice out and focus on the ancient entity examining his brain, “So do you need me to do anything else.”
“Examine your kern,” Vulcan said, “Once we know you will live, we can work on your life story.”
Tristan immediately turned his vision inward. His kern was there, but it was raw. Strangely the area around his heart was perfectly fine, his whole diaphragm was fine. Beyond that, however, organs and muscles were swollen and damaged from having a piece that was supposed to be organic converted to metal. The damage was probably caused every time he reinforced his body, but he never did that for days on end.
Stolen novel; please report.
That was expected, no life saving measure was perfect. What was unexpected was the health of his heart. It should be barely hanging on. In fact, Tristan had expected to need the rejuvenating effects of Luke and his protein shakes to fully recover. It did not take him long to find the answer.
His heart had taken on a trait of light kerns. It was now pulling on the force of growth, however, unlike the other alloyed forces it stayed around the heart. When it made contact with any architect alloy, it immediately fused and bonded to any damaged tissue. So he had gotten his hands on a limited form of the healing abilities of a light kern.
As an experiment, he made as much architect alloy as he could. He kept it under a third of his essence so that it would not spread out and form a backup of his kern. Then he fed it through his heart. The area that was healed expanded out as the alloy found damaged areas and fixed them.
Tristan grinned as he realized his recovery might be shorter than he had initially thought. The only downside appeared to be the fact that the cost to heal was so high. He had used almost a third of his maximum essence to repair a few inches of tissue. Yes, it could save his life, but it would not help him win any fights. Though it had one huge upside, it replaced Luke’s shakes quite nicely, and that was what really mattered.
Tristan reported his findings to Vulcan. He was excited, but the lamp post had to douse his enthusiasm, “Be careful, it healed while you were unconscious. There is a good chance it's an ability you can’t turn off, so inspect your body every few weeks or so and make sure it's not feeding any cancer. You have both decay and hunger, so that's not terrible, but it could become a problem if you don’t pay attention.”
Tristan nodded, not wanting to turn into an abomination. Though he was hurt often enough that he would rarely have to worry about it. Even workouts revolved around damaging the body to make it stronger. He wondered if enhanced healing would make exercises more or less efficient. Considering the ground he had lost he hoped it was the former.
“Now give me your life story as you remember it, start as early as you can, and move to the present day,” Vulcan said.
So Tristan obliged, starting with the earliest memory he could think of. The sifting, it took Tristan a few moments of talking to realize that he struggled to remember anything before the sifting. The lack of knowledge only even became apparent when he commented on how he disliked Clive. He had disliked the man for telling his best friend to stay away from him.
He had no memories of this friendship. Were they close? Thirteen was old enough for tentative marriage talks to start. More oddities started appearing, Hailey’s memories were still there, but Tristan could not tell where they started or ended. They felt like formative memories that he knew had happened to him, but could not tell exactly when.
“Am I going to keep forgetting things?” Tristan asked.
“No,” Vulcan said, “Well, maybe, but you don’t have to worry about becoming a different person. Humans have a massive advantage over all other creatures, we have a sapient soul, which holds our personalities. There is no way for essence to go in and warp it. Sure it can take your memories, but it won’t change you as a person. Though it is possible that it could strip away the facade that you give to others.”
Tristan was not sure how he felt about that. He would argue that he was his memories. Anger at his father had pushed him forward, without that memory his motivation would most likely wane. Maybe he had lost one of those pieces of his past and would only be left to wonder what had changed between yesterday and today.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by sniffling. Tristan looked down to see Tris wiping a tear away, “That is so sad.”
“That is just so cruel, you made her cry,” Vulcan scolded.
Tris lunged forward and hugged Tristan, getting snot all over him. He tried to resist, but the power of a tier zero little girl overwhelmed him in his weakened state. She patted Tristan on the head while saying,” It will be alright, Harp is here.”
Helen finally came in with a plate full of food, followed by Eve and Conni. All three of them stopped and stared at the scene before them.
Helen cooed, “Ohh that’s so adorable.”
Eve simply smiled, while Conni said, “Tristan, why did you make the poor girl cry?”
“I am going to dunk you in the river,” Tristan said to Vulcan. He made sure to keep the comment mental and sent an image of him drowning the human form of the lamppost. All he got back was laughter.
“Just bring the food over,” Tristan griped out loud.
Helen finally relented and came over. She set the plate on the bed and picked up Tris, “So, what will you be doing after this?”
“I’m going to grind my way through the Lord of the Underworld’s army until I’m strong enough to kill him,” Tristan said.
“Baby, he hurt you,” Helen said like that was a valid counterargument.
“Yes,” Tristan said slowly, “You get rid of those things before they do it again.”
He was very clear on that point. Despite its sentience, the Lord of the Underworld was an it, not a he. It was not human, it was little more than an animated corpse that should have been left where corpses belong. Buried underground.