There was a scream from behind Tristan, he could hear the frustration laced through the yell. He did not care, he intended to be long gone before the spriggon could do anything about it. Running through the damaged streets, Tristan wondered what had caused all this destruction. He doubted it was the legions of spriggons that had destroyed the city. They had the ability to but were all lying where they had parasitized their hosts.
Tristan was aware that everything fell apart over time. Mud and anything organic went first, but they could still last generations if well maintained. Stone could last for millennia, there was no reason for the business level to look like this. Tristan wondered if a civil war had occurred. People would have no issue with destroying their history over slight differences.
The sound of pattering feet distracted Tristan from his thoughts, which were themselves a distraction from running. Looking back he found that he was being followed, and not by a single spriggon. A dozen of the tree men were following him. Tristan did not believe that he would struggle to handle them, but he would receive injuries. They might not be life threatening, but the healing alloy in his amulet was a precious resource that he did not want to waste in a fight like this.
So he poured on the speed, he was tier four they were tier zero, so he would just have to outrun them. A minute later, Tristan realized that he might have underestimated the spriggons. They were just as strong as a fit tier zero man but only weighed fifty pounds. Less mass meant fewer problems with weaving around obstacles and a greater maximum speed. Tristan should have known they would be excellent in a sprint, but he had been distracted by the numbers attached to the tiers.
Metal was naturally a slower element if not the slowest element. He had a lot of weight and less stamina than someone with a light or water kern. It took him a few moments to come to terms with reality, he would not be escaping the spriggons. They could just keep going as if they had light kerns.
If outrunning them was not an option, then he would have to fight. However, at the pace they were currently moving, they were rapidly eating the place occupied by the spriggons. Tristan knew what that meant and veered towards the first group of elementals he came across.
They were a mixture of stone and water elementals with a few other types sprinkled in. Unfortunately no fire, but there were about eighteen of them so numbers would at least be on Tristan’s side. They were currently rebuilding a structure and doing a rather good job with it. No mortar held the stones together, but they had been stacked over and over so many times that they had been worn into a shape that worked.
None of them reacted when Tristan vaulted over their wall. He was not getting in their way, so they did not mind him. Tristan had expected the spriggons to hesitate a little when charging into a gaggle of the undead. That didn’t sound right.
“Vulcan, what do you call a large group of undead?” Tristan asked as he slid to a stop in the wreckage of the building. It looked to be a tile sculpting shop, judging by the chisels and flat squares of stone.
“I don’t know,” Vulcan sounded irritable at first but slowly gained interest in the topic, “A horde I guess. A really bad day for lots of people? Though as elementals family, kind, or order could work, like on the periodic table.”
Horde worked. The spriggons barged into the horde of elementals destroying their wall in their rush to catch Tristan. He sighed, why did all mythical beasts have the malevolent desire to destroy humans? Most predators would let him leave the area if he proved to be a threat. These plant men had no desire to let Tristan go and they would pay the price.
They had never come across elementals before and did not realize what was about to happen. Before they could reach Tristan the spriggons were dragged into a conflict with the elementals, and to his surprise, it was a relatively even fight. The elementals in the mine were mostly warriors, hardened in real combat. These were crafters and lacked the instincts hammered into the soul of every soldier via repetition.
All the elementals were tier one, making them stronger than the spriggons. The spriggons were sapient, giving them the ability to coordinate and assist each other. Both could regenerate at a near constant rate and the spriggons were unaware of the elemental’s weakness, so this brawl could potentially go on for days.
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Tristan contemplated leaving, but he did not want the spriggon to go for help. These twelve needed to die. He held out a hand and made a hollow awl in it. The tool was made for poking holes in leather, but lightweight wood should be just as vulnerable. As a last step, he filled the hollow needle with decay alloy.
Stepping into the free for all, Tristan jabbed the awl into a spriggons back. It did not react to the invasive material right away, which gave Tristan a chance to stab two more before the screaming started. The amount of decay shoved in was not large by Tristan’s standards, but it was enough to turn the spriggon’s torso into a gooey mess.
The remaining nine unpoisoned spriggons paused to stare at their thrashing companion. Their moment of sartlement was not shared by the elementals who bore down on them. Tristan saw one of the sprigons get an arm torn off as a higher tier elemental got its hands on it. The fourth spriggon Tristan tried to stab was ready. It caught his wrist with both of its hands.
Normally Tristan would have bore it to the ground with his far greater strength, but he had elementals for that. Placing a finger from his off-hand on the spriggon’s neck, he drew a silvery line down from its throat to its hip. It would not do the same damage as something delivered straight to the core, but it would stop it from resisting the elemental that grabbed it by the legs and dragged it to the ground.
The number of spriggons dropped rapidly from twelve down to eight, freeing up those elementals to speed up the slaughter. Tristan noticed the spriggons move from killing Tristan to escaping his trap. However, disengaging from a bunch of elementals hell bent on grappling was not an easy feat.
Three succeeded. One was immediately jumped by the tier two elemental that Tristan assumed to be the leader of the group. The other two succeeded in untangling themselves and running. Tristan could not let a single one escape, but he could not run in two directions at once. Summoning Vulcan, he compressed and launched a basic fireball at one. He was happy to see it connect with enough force to throw the spriggon into a nearby wall.
Fire would end that one with no doubt, so he turned and chased down the last remaining one. It had traded a foot for its freedom, a fact that Tristan had assumed would make it slow. Desperation was the most powerful drug on earth, and it let the spriggon push on even as its foot regrew.
Unfortunately for it, Tristan had just as much on the line as it did. While it was still fast, he caught up within a minute and tackled the spriggon to the ground. He grabbed it by the torso and squeezed his hands into fists. The wood groaned, then cracked unable to resist his grip.
“Let go,” The spriggon finally said.
“You chased me down and attacked me!” Tristan growled.
He poured decay alloy into the spriggon. It tried to say something else, but its vocal organs were housed in its chest. The wood softened before it became unable to support itself and fell to pieces under Tristan’s grip. He frowned, decay was almost too effective against these mythical beasts. However, if he used it on a tier zero human he would get similar results. Tristan shuddered slightly at the image of a human falling apart under his touch. Maybe the weak had a point when they feared the strong.
As if desiring to increase Tristan’s unease, Vulcan chimed in, “You would make a great Demon Lord. Not quite as good as Enoch, but give it ten tiers and you might.”
Tristan slowly got to his feet, wiping spriggon slime off his hands, “What forces does the Steel Saint have?”
It felt weird calling a being like the Steel Saint by name. It seemed too normal for a person that could tear apart the world. Enoch was not a name the Caldera had used, but it was still too simple.
“He had several composite forces, one was permanence, it was the one I was trying to figure out how to upgrade adamance into. The other I am aware of is harmony, think of it like a super architect force. Those were the two forces that I was privy to,” Vulcan said proudly.
Tristan almost stopped walking, “Is it possible to upgrade forces? Why wouldn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“Because it's not relevant until you reach tier six in your kern,” Vulcan said, “What would you even make your alloy a composite of, its whole shtick is being a composite force.”
Tristan still would have liked to know. There were several forces he would like to mix it with. For instance, persistence might help solve his inefficient kern, while encroachment might let him tear forces straight out of artifacts and use them as if he had an alloy while he had access to the essence. It might let him drain the growth essence out of the dead spriggons effectively giving Tristan infinite regeneration.
He sighed, that was for future Tristan. Currently, he was passing the scene of the brawl and had noticed something concerning. The spriggon he had hit with the fireball. A burnt arm was lying on the ground, the shoulder was attached, but the rest of the spriggon was missing. Tristan frowned, it had ripped its own arm off. This is why he always tried to get to the torso.
“It looks like I might get some company,” Tristan muttered. At this point, there was no way he would catch the spriggon, so he waved to the elementals and continued for the far wall. He needed to find the vault, then leave.