This was the epito of engineering and smiting. The creation of a new material that served multiple purposes at once. High heat tolerance, high rigidity, and flexibility. Solid, durable, and extrely efficient in the conduction of energy.
Kael stared at the bar for a long mont, letting that reality sink in without letting it distract him. The tal didn’t just sit there like steel. It felt alive in the way certain tools did when they were made correctly.
Not warm, not magical in the dramatic sense, but dense with potential, like it wanted to be shaped and was simply waiting for a will strong enough to force it into form. The faint crimson shimr beneath the surface was subtle, only catching the light when he moved it, and the sh texture under his fingertips made it feel less like a slab and more like sothing grown.
Kael didn’t hesitate to start the final process. A creation process that would change who he was forever.
He didn’t let that line beco poetry in his head. He treated it like a warning label. If he finished this, there was no going back to being a guy with a crowbar and a prayer. Tools changed people. The Tower changed people even faster. He exhaled, rolled his shoulders, and gripped Brokk’s hamr with the kind of calm you only got when your fear had already been accepted and filed away.
He began by hamring the bar into two equal parts. And begun by creating the first gauntlet, a left handed one.
The first strike rang out low, not loud like cheap steel, but deep, like the building itself had a throat and he’d just hit it. The bar resisted for a fraction of a second, then yielded cleanly, almost obediently. Kael adjusted his grip, asured the midpoint by eye, then by feel, then committed.
When the bar finally separated, it wasn’t a jagged break. It was a crisp division, like the alloy wanted symtry. Kael set the two halves beside each other and felt a thin satisfaction, the kind that didn’t need a smile.
Since he already created one before, making a second one was easier. He already had the plan in mind, and Brokk’s hamr seed to know where he wanted to strike and how he wanted to mold the steel.
The mory of the first gauntlet guided his hands without him needing to overthink it. He didn’t have to reinvent the steps, only refine them. Brokk’s hamr responded to intention more than muscle. Even his lighter taps carried authority, and the alloy listened. Kael found himself working in a rhythm that was almost uncomfortable in how natural it felt, like this had always been what his hands were ant to do, and life had just taken a detour through misery first.
He shaped, pressed, folded, and crushed. Structure shaped from what was first a bar of tal into fingers, then an elongated wristguard that reached the elbow.
The finger segnts ca first, not as delicate art, but as functional geotry. He ford the knuckles thick enough to take impact, then thinned the joints just enough that the hand could flex without binding.
The tal didn’t squeal or crack the way the earlier brittle thermalloy had threatened. It held. It bent. It settled into place with every correction. When he began extending the wrist guard, he kept it long, not because it looked impressive. But because he needed space for planting runes later. Then guard and protect his arm after. If the tool was ant to survive his kind of output, it had to protect more than his hand.
It looked cleaner than the first gauntlet he had, smoother and slightly slimr. And most of all, lighter without feeling less durable.
That was the part that surprised him. The old gauntlet had been a miracle held together by stubbornness and patched assumptions. This one felt designed. Even before lining, even before runes, it sat in his grip as it belonged. He flexed the fingers once, listening for any scrape or catch. The motion was smooth, controlled, and it didn’t feel like he was wearing a brick.
The gauntlet was gray with a mix of black in it; it had an interesting texture, even with all the hamring. The hamr itself didn’t destroy or reshape the sh; it actually spread it equally along the arm.
Kael ran his thumb along the surface again and felt those small bumps, aligned like a woven pattern beneath tal skin. The silk lattice had been disciplined, pulled into place the way a craftsman pulled thread tight. He didn’t fully understand how the Tower recognized this kind of material evolution so cleanly, but he wasn’t going to complain.
Understanding ca later. Having it work ca now.
It was the kind of texture that would help grip without tearing cloth, the kind that suggested the material had its own logic. Kael liked that. Tools with logic were safer than tools with mood swings.
He didn’t want to line the gauntlet with leather yet before he finished the other one first.
He moved to the second half of the bar with the sa rhythm, but faster, more confident. The repeated motions ca easier now. Fingers, knuckles, palm housing, forearm guard. The alloy responded consistently, and that consistency was its own relief. No surprise cracks. No sudden brittleness. No warning tooltip telling him he’d just made sothing that would shatter if soone breathed on it.
Night had begun to fall on the area, and that would an that tomorrow they would have to start their basilisk hunt. So he needed to be done before sothing or soone cos and bothers him.
The light outside the window slit had changed from dull red to a deeper, bruised shade. Shadows in the terrace below stretched longer, and voices in the building had started to shift too.
More movent in the hallways. More murmurs. People got nervous when night approached, even in a "safe" base. Nervous people were curious. Curious people walked toward the noise.
And he has yet to finish, so he could deal with those who would co to find out what the noise was about.
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