Tristan was not foolish enough to think that the headache would not get worse, “Vulcan, will you still be able to help from the primordial realm?”
“I should be, why?” Vulcan asked.
“The light from your lamp post will worsen the headache I have if it reaches migraine levels,” Tristan said, “Also if I do end up with something like that, please don’t talk into my mind unless it is important.”
“Everything I say is important,” Vulcan joked as the lamp post popped out of existence.
The hideout was pitch black without the ethereal fire from Vulcan despite it being mid-morning outside. Tristan took a deep breath and focused down again. Immediately the pressure started building, for now, it was manageable but it put a timer on how long he could work.
What Tristan was trying was both crude and simple. He was treating the exterior of his cell walls like a crafting material. They would be infused with metal essence, specifically architect essence. This was important because the force within the kharkodine ore needed something to bond to, but they also wanted the bond to be recognized by his soul. The architect alloy would help force his body not to just heal away the resulting bond. Once this was over, his hands would never be the same again. Even if they were removed and healed back, Tristan would get whatever this experiment resulted in.
Not wanting to waste time, Tristan went to work. At first, he had been worried that he would accidentally infuse the wrong part of the cell. Fortunately, the wall was the exterior and the easiest part to identify. Tentatively he wrapped the cell in essence, the infusion alloy allowed it to meld with the muscle fiber’s wall without damaging it. The single cell seemed to glow in his metal sense now that it effectively had a metal wall.
When he had spread out metal essence through his forearms, it was like a coating of dust, grainy and indistinct. Now that he had a clear picture of what he needed to do, Tristan was able to speed up. Ten seconds later he had finished a few hundred more. This was not as hard as Vulcan had it seem.
The positive thought buoyed him enough to resist the mounting pain in his head. Slowly but surely he burned through the essence in his kern and started pulling from his backup reservoirs. For hours he pushed through the pain, but he was making progress. He noticed that cells were grouped in certain ways, letting him go over thousands at a time, infusing each one.
Once he ran out of essence in his reservoirs he released his focus and cringed at the pain. But he was excited to see his progress. Summoning Vulcan, he winced at the bright light.
“Don’t look,” Vulcan warned.
Tristan looked and his excitement fell into despair. He had infused thousands if not hundreds of thousands of cells. There was no real progress. What was a hundred thousand to the tens of billions that he needed to infuse? Tristan did not even have a way to comprehend a number that large. There weren’t that many parses in the caldera, there weren’t that many pounds of steel in the mine, and he wasn’t even certain there were that many seeds planted in a decade by farmers. And he thought he could change it in an afternoon.
He did some quick math. Quick might be an exaggeration. Tristan did it quickly for someone who felt like his head was an egg that was hatching. A hundred thousand an hour with two hours of meditation to recover his essence let him do eight repetitions a day. Glancing at his water and food supply, he realized that he wouldn’t crack twenty million before he needed to resupply.
His pain fueled a new emotion. Anger. “Vulcan! You expect me to spend eighty-five years sitting down here messing with my body for some force that I could get from an essence reservoir while breaking my kern?”
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The ancient being let out a sigh, sounding his age for once, “I told you not to look. You can get it done. Sect alchemists do it in about a week and they mostly shun any scientific advancements. This is not a part of the process that is affected by the arm still being attached. Instead, it is your relative inexperience and wastefulness.”
“What do you mean wastefulness, I have better essence control than anyone I know,” Tristan snapped.
That was true. No one practiced making constructs more than he did. Alloy was not an externally visible force. It had no flashy effects like Luke’s lightning or Siren’s armor. Alloy did not enhance his body either, like Jenna’s persistence. He could not use it to alter the world around him like his father despite both of them possessing the force of consumption. Tristan could only use it on the inside, where Shadow Fist could convert ambient essence into his own.
He had thought himself strong, but Vulcan had told him otherwise. That same afternoon The Lord of the Underworld attacked Hadrid, destroying Alchehall. Tristan knew if couldn’t have the most essence or the most potent force, he would have to be the best at using his talents. That work had paid off, before the Caldera’s fall he could have claimed to be the third strongest person there. Even after Siren’s elites were raised to tier four, Tristan was better. His extra work and live practice had paid off. However, now Vulcan claimed his essence control was poor, and even worse he expected that Tristan could get hundreds of times better over the next two weeks.
“Slagging teens, this is why I disciplined my kids,” Vulcan quietly swore, then in a more moderated voice, “Stop being dumb, all tier…”
“You think I’m being dumb!” Tristan almost growled, then he started yelling, “I listened to you and now my home is gone. You stopped me from going back to check for survivors, I’m stuck in a hole and you expect me to do the impossible.”
Was it fair to blame Vulcan for any of that? No, but emotions were foolish like that. Emotions lied to a person when they were in control, giving power to impulses best avoided. When reigned in and mastered, they would be the power by which a person did great things. However, Tristan had not been controlling his emotions, he had never controlled his emotions, he had shoved them in a box and pretended to forget about them.
“I’m done with this,” Tristan spat at Vulcan, “I’m going to the Caldera to see if Luke survived.”
“I wouldn’t,” Vulcan warned, but Tristan didn’t listen, “Tristan there’s a…”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Tristan yelled. He left Vulcan in the hideout. It was a mostly meaningless sign as he was still only one summon away.
“No seriously listen..” Vulcan tried again.
“Shut up,” Tristan yelled and shoved the hatch open.
He took another step up and hit his head on the top of the hatch. It hadn’t opened all the way. Tristan shoved, getting nowhere. A third shove got nowhere. Had Vulcan locked him in here? Tristan shoved again, the resistance was gone. Unfortunately, that last shove came at the same time as Vulcan changed from his polite warning.
“There is a molten drake standing on your door!”
Tristan stared blankly at the giant green eye that stared back at him. It was as large as his fist and had the sadistic intelligence of a cat. This was not a creature that killed solely for food. Copper scales covered what Tristan could see of the beast’s head like overlapping coins. They were all stained by soot which gave the creature a grungy look.
A forked tongue flicked out and the creature gave what Tristan could only interpret as a smile. Tristan had only a moment to notice the dagger like teeth before its head snapped forward like a snake. Backpedaling in a panic, Tristan fell off the ladder and to the bottom of the shaft. A ten foot fall was not enough to hurt him, but it did give a good view of what could have happened to him.
The drake’s teeth sank into the metal hatch, chomping a neat bite shaped hole into it. Tristan scrambled backward on his butt, he was not sure how to fight this thing. It was way bigger than he had thought it would be, the bone sloth would be torn apart in seconds if they crossed claws. If they crossed claws was not a certainty as Tristan saw the next ability of the drake. Fire started leaking from the corners of the beast’s jaws as the drake’s smile grew.
“Get back in here. Now!” Vulcan ordered.
Tristan obeyed this time. Scrambling back he went all the way to the back of the room. It was only eighteen feet but he hoped it would be enough. A paper thin sheet of adamance formed in the doorway right as the shaft filled with fire. The temperature in the hideout rose a few degrees, but fortunately, the drake either couldn’t or wouldn’t keep going long enough to cook him.
“Before the adamance dissipates weld another plate from the beds above the first to completely block the doorway. You aren’t leaving until he gets bored,” Vulcan said.
Tristan mutely nodded as he finally understood how Vulcan had known. In his metal sense, the metallic dragon scales stood out like a bonfire sitting right on top of his home. A bonfire that made this temporary shelter into a tomb.