The vault door shut, Tristan was safe.

  “Blind gods!” Tristan yelled. He turned around and tried to open the door.

  “What’s wrong,” Vulcan asked, concerned.

  “I left the division obsidian in the hallway!” Tristan gritted his teeth as he tried to pry the door open.

  “Leave it, your kern is breaking, it is not worth your life, “Vulcan chided, though he sounded exasperated.

  Tristan slid down the door. He had not considered how he was going to leave the vault. For obvious reasons, there was a handle on the reverse side. The locking mechanism was exposed, but it was infused with adamance.

  Adamance! If he couldn’t have division he would just have to acquire adamance. Tristan was unable to break off even a small piece of the door, so he placed his back to the door and slid into a sitting position. He held the healing amulet to his gut, hoping that he would have enough essence to fix himself up.

  He was not going to be able to sleep. Breaking a kern was painful, but like any pain, it could be tolerated better when it was no longer new, nor unexpected. The pain itself was not dissimilar to a broken bone.

  Still, he was tired, he would have to sleep soon. Tristan started taking deep breaths, simply wanting this ten-hour slog to repair his kern to end. Hopefully, it was only that long.

  “Hey,” Vulcan said, “So I want you to eat that ent’s heart.”

  “Why would I eat that thing,” Tristan said a bit disgusted, “I don’t need growth alloy.”

  He had dropped the spherical object when he realized he had forgotten to grab the obsidian. It was not particularly disgusting, just a wood-like structure made of hexagonal supports. A membrane covered the holes, stopping a green liquid from sloshing out.

  It radiated an intense amount of growth force. Tristan would have considered it if he lacked the ability to heal. However, his heart produced a small amount of growth. It was not enough to make a difference in the middle of a fight. However, if he had a week or two of rest, the small amount of growth could charge a tier seven reservoir. That was good enough.

  “Not growth alloy,” Vulcan said, “It is a perfect item to finish activating your anima.”

  For a moment Tristan forgot about the pain, “I can get an anima?”

  “You already have one, it's simply dormant,” Vulcan explained, “It would be prudent to use your unfiltered connection to the primordial realm to awaken it.”

  That was enough for Tristan. For a long time, he had wanted an anima. It was better for combat than a kern, at least from what he had seen. Conni was able to match a warrior with relative ease. Vulcan claimed it did not assist with essence recovery, but Tristan refilled his kern around once every three hours if he had no spare reservoirs to drain.

  The sphere was a bit larger than Tristan’s fist. He was hesitant at first he hesitated. Was he really about to eat a raw heart? This seemed awfully close to some of the stories about real demon cultists. Then he remembered, it came from a plant. He ate broccoli without trepidation, this was no different.

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  So he took a bite.

  It tasted like biting an oak. The membrane deformed as the wooden lattice crunched beneath his teeth. Maybe he should have peeled it. Blind gods, he was thinking of peeling a heart like a potato. The material was tier six, putting up significant resistance. It couldn’t stop him when it had a body so it wouldn’t stop him when it was inert.

  The heart was tough but after ten minutes of effort, Tristan managed to stuff it all in his stomach. It sat there like he had drunk a jug full of mud. He couldn’t tell if it was working or not. Animas were supposed to make a person feel stronger, right?

  “Sorry in advance,” Vulcan said.

  “What do you mean sorry?” Tristan asked. When Vulcan didn’t respond, he yelled out loud, “Vulcan, what are you talking about?”

  He felt a presence fill the vault. The door's adamant force was stripped, and many of the fire artifacts cracked and exploded in their crates. Tristan recognized Vulcan’s active intent, it was powerful, monstrously so. However, the last time he had lacked anything of substance to compare it to. Despite the weight of it, Viral eclipsed him, it was almost unimaginable that some people out there dwarfed Viral.

  Tristan’s mind went back to the time in the woods sitting in the warrior's hideout where Vulcan had demanded that Tristan trust him. That was not how trust worked, but now he had no other option. He simply lacked the ability to resist.

  Vulcan focused on Tristan’s arms. He had not had the chance to experiment with his new hands. They had impressed him, being highly durable, resistant to temperature, and good at stopping moving objects, like ovens. He had only ever been used correctly once. To steal essence from the spriggons.

  Absorption could take in force, temperature, and essence. Tristan would not be surprised to find it could absorb anything. He smiled slightly, kind of like alloy in a way. Then his eyes widened when he realized what Vulcan was about to do.

  “Please, no,” He groaned.

  Vulcan laughed, “Please yes!”

  Then he used the absorption force to reach into the primordial realm and drag a river metal essence through. No soul barred Vulcan, how could a realm possess life? Even if Tristan’s soul was able to stop the essence pouring in, he had cracked it wide open. Some of the essence went to patching up his kern like it was supposed to. Most went to his body.

  Tristan thought he understood pain. The dissonant silver flames over Hadrid’s home were the worst to date. Only now did Tristan understand that Vulcan had taken a large portion of the burden. One other thing was different. Tristan had eaten a tier six source of growth from a being possessing such an affinity to the force he could feel it from across a colosseum.

  It was like sandpaper was being dragged between individual muscle fibers, through his organs, and tearing apart his skin. Tristan wanted to lose himself to the pain. Vulcan had taken control, this would all work out whether or not he was conscious. There was not a lot he could do to affect the process.

  His body was on fire, however his mind was clear. The kern manifested in the circulatory system, the bones, the blood, and the heart. The anima was held within the viscera, muscles, and skin. The domain was controlled by the mind, nerves, and eyes and none of those were being touched.

  There was one thing he could do. Standing, he staggered to the shelves. If he couldn’t have division, he would take something more esoteric. Pulling crates aside, he made his way to the organic materials section. Removing a box he smiled. Well grimaced, smiling was a bit beyond him.

  Reaching in he removed an animal skin codex. He had thought it would be an excellent tool for a scribe, spy, or smuggler. Coughing, he spat up some blood as whatever Vulcan was doing tore into his lungs. The growth in his stomach patched it up immediately. He had thought the growth would cause tumors, however, growth focused first on healing. If it did not go beyond those set bounds it would not be necessary to add architect to define boundaries. The ent’s well of vitality was barely keeping up.

  Tristan walked back to his bag carrying the book. He fell once when the tendons in his leg were ground down. Within ten seconds the tendons had returned, allowing him to progress again. Thankfully he had left the bag in the vault, he opened it and felt water drip onto his hands. Looking up almost caused him to topple backward, but the ceiling was not leaking.

  Touching his face he found that he was crying. It was fine for men to cry. At least that's what Helen said. Maybe his mother was not the best measure for emotional well being. He refocused his wandering thoughts, heart, he needed his hearts. This one was from a light elemental, he had taken from the one lounging on a bed a few floors up.

  “Need some, “ cough,”Essence,” Tristan asked Vulcan. He did not have the intact kern necessary to direct it himself.

  No words came, but a feeling of assent was clear. A tendril of flame touched the codex. Tristan panicked for a moment, thinking that the force allowing for the text to change was going to be destroyed. In a more sane state, he would have known that the force was bound to an object, not to the state of said object. The artifact would weaken at the same rate whether it was ash or a book.

  He scooped the ash into a small bowl into which he also stuffed the heart. Vulcan poured in some more of his essence, creating a powerful essence reservoir. Normally, eating a tier eight reservoir would be a death sentence for a tier four. However, he was currently transitioning from tier four to five. He was also having more essence dumped into him per minute than the reservoir could hold, so he risked it.

  He downed the ashy concoction and proceeded to do the only thing that could shorten this pain. Sitting cross-legged, Tristan started singing. It was not pretty, however, it was the only thing he could do to take his mind off the coarse grains of essence tearing through his body.