Tristan had assumed escaping the drake would be the most difficult part of leaving the hideout. It was big and scary, surely the giant lizard had exceptional senses. This was evidently not true when it had a foot of snow covering it.

“You still need to tread softly, I don’t know how good this beast’s creator was. It would be safe to assume it can feel vibrations in the ground,” Vulcan cautioned.

Tristan sent a mental affirmation as he pulled himself out of the powdery snow filling his hole in the ground. Snow would also muffle most vibrations, Tristan just had to not be stupid and flail around.

One might ask why he was leaving his haven. It was simple, Tristan needed to start moving. Waiting for summer might have been prudent but he knew that he would not be able to stay cooped up for the remaining two months of winter. His mind was already starting to fray at the edges from a few weeks of high stakes solitude. Vulcan was decent as far as companions went, but having a voice in one’s head did not help a slowly deteriorating mental state.

Tristan cautiously took a step away from the slumbering creature. The drake was so still that Tristan could not even tell if it was breathing. Once he was far enough away to afford the distraction he asked Vulcan, “Why isn’t the drake freezing to death?”

“Dragon scales,” Vulcan answered, “They make near perfect insulators in addition to being a rigid material. It makes them hard to detect on anything that looks for heat sources or electric fields. Despite them being ectothermic their internal flame allows them to regulate their internal temperature.”

Tristan felt like being a human was a massive disadvantage. Supposedly there were intelligent beasts and they were terrifying existences by their very nature. Being born with tough skin that allowed one to ignore the environment seemed a bit unfair as a natural trait. Looking back at the drake one more time, Tristan started his hike. He just needed to make one detour before leaving for good.

“Where are you going?” Vulcan asked.

“Back to the Caldera,” Tristan answered, “I need to make sure they survived.”

The response was harsh, “Are you stupid, they either died or left, either way, you will only be wasting your time.”

Tristan frowned, “Your family has been dead for, what, a thousand years? You still want to go check in with them.”

“I’m a soul tool, I was made for a purpose,” Vulcan said, “The logic of that purpose has no bearing on what I was created to accomplish.”

He had been aware that Vulcan was not the original Vulcan. That man had been a huge warrior with red hair and dark skin, what Tristan held was the artifact he had created upon his own death. It was a phenomenon that was rare enough that Tristan had never seen it happen. He knew that it rarely happened accidentally and never under duress. Guiders were dodgy about the process and so was anyone in authority, claiming that they did not want murder to be committed in the attempt to make an artifact.

Vulcan’s birth was strange, he was formed in a stressful situation. However, he was basically an elemental, sealed to accomplish his biggest regret. Tristan realized something, Vulcan had an anima, domain, and kern, so could he be holding the artifact version of an elemental lord? Tristan wanted to ask, but the consequences weren’t worth it. Vulcan could get offended and say no which would mean nothing, as the artifact was enslaved to only say and do things that assisted him in fixing his last regret. For now, that was in Tristan’s favor so he would let it go.

Tristan jogged towards the Caldera. At first, he went at top speed, which was great until he fell into a divot that had been filled in with snow. It had been ten feet deep and fortunately only four wide. This mountain was covered by thousands of similar clefts in the rock formation. From then on he did not put weight on a foot until he touched solid ground with his toes.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The trip back took far less time as his leg was not broken on this go around, but it still cost him a good six hours to traverse the eighty miles to the Caldera. Dread settled on Tristan when he failed to see something that should have never been absent. The wall was gone, not reduced to rubble, the wall was just gone. Snow covered whatever debris were left behind, making the transition from the outside to the inside seamless.

“Told you nothing would be left,” Vulcan chipped in.

“Shut up,” Tristan muttered as he pawed through the snow to see what had happened.

One unintended benefit of imbuing his hands with absorption was the near immunity to cold. They constantly absorbed force and released heat as a byproduct. While it would not be enough to counter anyone with a dedicated freezing force, it was good enough to resist the environment.

Scraping away the snow, Tristan found black soil and not just the topsoil. Farmers would commonly burn their fields to make the land better at bearing crops. However, it would only be the top, Tristan had only dug down three inches, but the dirt was crispy the entire way. If the whole Caldera was covered like this, Tristan could only fear the worst.

He walked into the Caldera, nothing obstructed his view. The snow was flat and level as far as the eye could see. Every tree, house, and bump in the landscape had been scorched away. Every landmark but one. Freezing a large body of water took some time, especially if an angry god came in and superheated the lakebed.

Finding the Lake Caldera was easy enough. The shape of the lake had changed, but not so much that Tristan could not find it. He could feel the melted metal that had once been tools, weapons, and nails covering the ground where the city had once been. Not that Tristan could identify them, they were all amorphous blobs of material sitting just below the snow. He even came across a few pieces of tower steel slag, Tristan had never seen the metal deformed quite to that extent.

Tristan shuffled through the snow, trying to find where the temple had been. Unfortunately, the Lake Caldera was not his city and he did not have a solid recollection of its layout. He found bits of ash that might have been a person at one time, but he never found the hole leading to the bunker.

Glaring at the surroundings, Tristan made a decision that some might deem wasteful. Fire started collecting around the head of the lamp post. He felt resistance as Vulcan was unwilling to release his essence for something he deemed trivial. Tristan gritted his teeth and pulled harder at the essence, the fire intensified.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Vulcan yelled, “I did not give you this essence.”

Tristan pulled a bit harder, he did not need this to be very strong. He tapped into gravity and the sphere of fire turned black like an eclipse. The wave of gravity was not powerful. Light wobbled and colors dulled, but the white out of the larger blasts he had created was absent. Tristan was forced down, though not to his knees.

“I need to find them,” Tristan said, “Would you have let me create a gravity blast if I had explained myself?”

“No,” Vulcan almost growled, “You need to get going, they are not here, and if they are it's because they are dead.”

That might have been true if Tristan had not found what he was looking for. The snow had collapsed in a single area that was wide enough to let people leave. He had known that the snow could not have possibly filled in the one hundred fifty foot shaft, instead, it would act more like a seal. One that was easily dislodged.

Tristan tamped his hope down. Before he had died, Kale had mentioned that the fire sense of let him see an object’s temperature. If honed it would let him see things through walls, but it was also overstimulating. Tristan could only see metal, meaning his sense only showed him a single element, whereas a fire kern saw the temperature of everything. Viral would have had both the lifespan to adapt to the use of his essence senses and the range to see them through the hundred and fifty feet of dirt.

The only way they would have survived was if Viral had chosen to ignore them. Luke would probably be insulted to know that he was too weak to be considered a valid target by Viral. Tristan started down the ladder, it was sooty just like everything else, though the snow atop the soot made his grip tenuous at the best of times.

When he reached the bottom he jumped down half expecting to see piles of corpses and black walls. Instead, he found a puddle that had frozen solid on the floor and clean brown dirt on the walls. Tristan slumped to the floor in relief, they were alive. His home was not completely gone. Tristan had no idea where they went, but he could be certain that Luke would be easy to find.

He felt the need to thank something, but found himself at a loss. The gods were dead and the only one he knew of was evil. Well if there was a good one out there Tristan decided to thank that one.

His relief was interrupted not ten seconds later, “Can we go now?” Vulcan whined.