Morning was up in the second tower while Andre’s forge had breathed its last fire in the hot coal. The light outside had that pale, washed-out quality Kael was starting to associate with community floors, too many bodies, too much stone, too little sky.
Inside the workshop, the world was smaller. Heat lived in the bricks, soot lived in the corners, and the sll of old tal clung to everything like a stubborn curse that didn’t care how many hours you scrubbed.
Andre moved like a man who’d done this so many tis his hands didn’t need permission from his brain. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate either. A cloth passed over the gauntlets in short, brutal strokes, and then he dabbed so strange product into the seams, sothing thick and dark that slled sharp, like burnt resin and bitter herbs mixed with oil.
Kael didn’t know the purpose off it until he noticed how his new gauntlets have changed. The surface didn’t just look cleaner. It looked sealed, like the tal had been told, very firmly, to stop bleeding heat and mana through every imperfect joint.
Andre flicked the cloth once, like he was done with the item and also done with the world, and then shoved both gauntlets forward over the anvil.
"Take ’em, lad."
Kael could only stare at first when Andre moved over the gauntlets, they were... incredibly different. He didn’t even reach out imdiately. His eyes just tracked over them the way he’d tracked over blueprints back on Earth, searching for stress points, weak links, places where a bad decision would snap him in half later.
"These look, sick..." Kael said.
Andre’s head jerked up like Kael had insulted his mother, his forge, and his ancestors in one breath.
"Sick? Ye daft bastard, since when does iron get sick?!" Andre said, feeling insulted.
Kael raised both hands quickly, palms open, an instinctive don’t hit with a hamr gesture.
"No-no, I an they look cool, aweso!" Kael said.
Andre snorted, but there was a hint of satisfaction under the annoyance, like the man hated praise but still liked being right.
"Aye, then quit yer babblin’ and try ’em on. See the difference yerself." Andre said.
Kael first took a breath, admiring the craftsmanship. He didn’t touch them yet. He let his eyes drink it in, because this wasn’t just "better gear." This was the difference between "my idea barely works" and "my idea will keep working when soone tries to kill ."
Andre didn’t fully recreate the gauntlets from scratch. No, he first parted it, split it apart, and reinforced every bit and piece of it with tal of his own. Kael rembered the sound from earlier, those clean, deliberate strikes that didn’t ring like desperate patchwork. Andre didn’t fight the material. He commanded it. Strange tal for Kael who learned the na of after consistent asking. Andre had said it like it was obvious, like Kael was the idiot for not being born knowing it, then refused to repeat himself until Kael pestered him enough tis that even the dwarf’s pride gave up. Then Andre fused them together, the old and the new, creating a brand new Gauntlet based on the One Kael had before.
Up close, it was clearer what "fused" ant. Andre hadn’t slapped plates on and called it done. The seams were married. Old structure and new reinforcent weren’t fighting each other; they were one piece. Kael could feel it just by looking, weight distributed properly, stress paths corrected, every "this might crack" made into "try cracking it, I dare you."
Granted, it was heavier. aning it’ll exhaust Kael more. But at the sa ti, it’ll pack a punch and take a punch. That trade-off sat in Kael’s mind like a asured bolt: heavier ant fatigue, yes, but fatigue was sothing you could plan around. A broken arm, a shattered rune, a lted socket mid-fight, those were failures you didn’t get to plan around.
He finally reached forward and lifted one gauntlet.
It didn’t feel like a costu piece. It felt like a tool. A real one. Dense, cold, alive in that Tower-item way where it wasn’t just tal anymore, it was a promise.
The whole structure was an ebony colored gauntlet, shimring almost glistening whenever light ca in contact with. Not glossy like cheap paint, more like obsidian polished by ti. It swallowed the dim lantern light, then spit it back as a slick highlight along the knuckles and ridges.
The shape was sharper now too. Not jagged, not impractical, intentional. The fists looked like they were designed to break things. The fingers had subtle claw-like tips that didn’t scream "ornant," they scread "if you try to grab , you’ll regret it."
Two cores, one on each arm sat at the palm, like large jewels. They weren’t pretty jewels. They were purpose. Each one set into a socket that hugged it tight, frad by tal that looked like it had been pressed around the core rather than drilled for it. The cores caught the light with a dull glow, one red, one darker, like embers trapped under glass.
And along the arm, three almost seamless looking cylinders, held by iron marbles below on top of a small groove where the marbles can move if Kael rotated the cylinders.
Kael turned the gauntlet slightly and heard it, tiny clicks, smooth and precise. No grinding. No wobble. The marbles weren’t decoration. They were the lockpoints. The grooves were shallow, just enough to guide the rotation and keep it from drifting mid-swing.
He could already imagine it: one quick twist with his thumb, a shift in rune alignnt, and the whole gauntlet’s "spell logic" would rewire itself without him ripping runes out like a panicked raccoon.
On each of the cylinders was a rune socket. The first one nearest to the wrist had four pentagonal rune slots. The one above it was hexagonal rune slots. And the ones above was heptagonal one. Leaving the spot right under the elbow for the Octagonal Anchor Rune.
That was the sa for both gauntlets.
Kael’s mouth went a little dry. The layout wasn’t just "more slots." It was organization. It was Andre taking Kael’s ssy, desperate experintation and turning it into a system that could be used under pressure. Pentagons near the wrist, fast access. Higher slots further up, structured support. Anchor near the elbow like a crown, stable and out of the way.
And the cylinders weren’t just for storage. They were separators. Physical distance. Controlled conduction. Everything Kael had been learning the hard way, written into the tal like a lesson that didn’t need words.
Andre also added sothing to Kael’s gauntlets. A small thick like hook on the wrist. And on the other wrist what looked like a small imbedded ring.
Kael spotted it imdiately once his eyes stopped drooling over the cylinders. The hook looked blunt enough not to snag on everything, but thick enough not to snap. The ring was embedded deep, not welded on like an afterthought. Both were placed where his wrists naturally crossed.
Andre had seen what Kael was suffering from when he needed to connect runes that didn’t agree with each other, and realized that his ingenious ’idea’ of the chain as a connector was, although primitive, worked.
Kael rembered his old setup, the chain always there, always in the way, always one more thing to catch on rubble or an enemy’s grip. It had saved his ass, sure, but it was also a liability he’d accepted because he didn’t have a better option.
"Couldn’t solve that issue,", was what Andre said, so he simplified it. Making it that Kael wouldn’t always be ’chain’ connected at all tis, and only connect the gauntlets whenever he needed.
That was the real genius. Not a complicated solution, the right simplification. Kael didn’t need a permanent link. He needed a controlled one.
Kael placed the gauntlets in his hands, and imdiately moved the notification of the new gear away, after all, he wanted to enjoy the sight of his improved weapons. The Tower could wait. The Tower always spamd rewards and labels like that made things less real. Kael wanted the reality first, the weight, the feel, the click of chanisms that wouldn’t betray him.
He slid the first gauntlet on, then the second. The inner lining, treated leather, tight and firm, hugged his forearms without pinching. No loose space, no awkward pressure points. The cuffs locked with a solid, quiet fit, like the gauntlets were acknowledging his arms as "ho."
He crossed one wrist atop the other. The hook in one of the gauntlets fit right into the ring on the other one and clicked shut. Then he spread his hands apart, pulling a chain from the inside of the right gauntlet, a connector with a retractable chain.
The chain didn’t slither out like his old one. It snapped into place with tension. It felt engineered, retractable, resistant, a controlled extension rather than a dangling mistake. It pulled just enough to tell him where the limit was, and when he eased his hands closer, it retracted smoothly, no slack flopping around.
"This is pretty sick."
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