“Hey Char,” Katya stepped into the workshop. Mountain followed her, somehow easily fitting his massive body through our door, with Richard behind. The tiny blonde powerhouse smiled at the sight of her armor slowly releasing heat into one of my cooling plates. “You’re almost done?”

I took a bite of the cheese that was part of my lunch. “No. But we’ve begun the process. The smaller pieces will take time, and we might need to cheat a bit to get the whole thing done soon.”

“You have five extra days,” Richard said simply. When I blinked and looked at him he shrugged. “Apparently the path to the den Katya will be clearing out was blocked by a sudden mudslide. Until it’s cleaned out, she can’t go. So I’m giving you five extra days.”

I felt a sense of relief. With the extra time, I’d be able to put even more work into the armor. Chromoly steel, as strong as it was, took far more time than I’d expected to finish each ingot of the material. With the extra time, I could finish each piece without worrying as much about how long it was taking. Time was my greatest enemy. The one thing that could stop me from doing the really amazing things I wanted was time, and more of it was only better for me.

“Hmf,” Katya, unlike me, seemed very disappointed. “I really wanted to go. Now I have to wait even longer. It’s so boring, just waiting for a good fight.”

Mountain pressed his massive head under her hand. She gave him a grateful smile, rubbing him behind the ears. Mountain grinned at her, and she seemed to take comfort in that.

“Don’t worry,” I said once I’d swallowed the food in my mouth. “This just means I can put more work into the armor. Once I’d done, you’ll be the most well-armored person on the continent.”

“Quite the claim,” Richard said.

A voice came from the main room. “Well, Char has never made a promise he couldn’t keep.”

We looked over to see Jennifer enter the room. She wore an elegant green dress and high red heels, here hair tied into an elaborate set of curls on top of her head. She looked more like a queen than the madam of a brothel.

Richard’s eyes bulged at the sight of her stepping into the workshop. “J-Jen-Jennifer!?”

“Just Jennifer my dear priest,” she said with a smile.

Katya let out a small ‘ah’ of surprise, and stepped forward. “Hello!” she bowed. “I’m Katya Narveaz! The Prophesied Child!”

“Lovely to meet you dearie,” Jennifer smiled at Katya, then looked at Richard, who was slowly paling. “Richard. It’s been a while. How has work been?”

I looked over at Richard. Katya looked at him. Mountain looked at him. Arthur walked in, saw us staring questioningly at Richard, then looked at him as well.

Richard, feeling our eyes upon him, coughed into a fist and looked away.

“For shame, priest,” I said dryly. He glared at me, only for Katya to speak next.

“How do you know Lady Jennifer, Richard?” she asked curiously.

With his charges big eyes upon him, Richard seemed unable to get his head straight. “I uh,” he coughed again, “she has aided me in certain issues I’ve had in the past.”

“Oh,” Katya seemed to accept that.

“Jennifer is one of the people that raised me,” I said quietly. “Like a mom.”

An olive branch. My way of saying that whatever she was, whatever she’d done, I still cared for her, and wouldn’t act like the ass I had.

Jennifer stared at me in shock. Then she smiled once more. A real smile, not the confident, self-assured one she seemed to prefer. “Yes, I suppose so,” she chuckled, returning to her original demeanor. “So, I here that Char is making you something.”

“Oh, yes!” Katya clenched a fist happily. “It’s going to be amazing!”

“Hopefully,” I grunted. “This extra time should help though. I’ll need it for the carbon fibers I’ll be making.”

“Carbon?” Jennifer, Katya, and Richard asked in unison.

I nodded. “Carbon. It’s one of the most stable states of matter in existence. Diamonds are made of it,” I leaned towards my regents and picked up one of the diamonds, showing it to the three of them. “Carbon also a very strong substance. If I can rework it on the molecular level, create crystal lattice sheets of about a molecule thick for each sheet…” I trailed off when I noticed Richard and Jennifer looked lost. Katya on the other hand was nodding, apparently understanding what I was talking about. “In basic terms, I’m planning to make an extremely strong set of shirts for Katya. I’ll need to protect her from electricity, as the carbon sheets are superconductive, but that is a small price to pay. Even if something manages to pierce her actual armor, the carbon undershirts would protect her.”

Katya seemed ecstatic at the idea. Jennifer simply sighed.

“He gets so enthusiastic about these things,” she looked over at Katya. “Now as for you my dear, I think I’d like to get to know the young hero of our nation,” she looked over at Mountain. “That is, if you’re okay with it?”

The massive dog nodded seriously, then grinned.

“Oy,” Richard quirked an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be asking me that?”

“I only speak to the man in charge dearie,” ignoring the way Richard sputtered once more, Jennifer placed an arm around Katya’s shoulders and began to guide her out of the room. “Now sweetie, I’d like to speak about…”

As she left the room with an aptly listening Katya, Arthur walked over to Richard. “Leave ‘em be,” Arthur said to the knight. “You know how womenfolk are. Probably talking about dresses or good looking men.”

As Richard seemed to quake in fear at the very thought of Katya speaking about such things, I looked over to where Jennifer and Katya now stood down the hallway. As I watched, Jennifer made a stabbing motion. Katya grinned brightly and followed the motion. After a few more violent motions like that, with Jennifer apparently guiding her through each motion, I found myself smiling.

Of course of all the things Jennifer and Katya had in common…

Shaking my head, I scarfed down the rest of my food and went back to work. Lifting my alchemy set, I began mixing the next potion I’d need. Arthur went back to creating more ingots of metal for me moments later.

When Katya entered the room with Jennifer later, I looked up at her. Then I stared a bit harder.

Her cheeks were fuller. Her lips and eyes somehow more prominent. She seemed to glow. For a moment I didn’t understand why seemed so different. Then I realized what had happened.

“I like your new makeup,” I said.

Katya smiled. “Thanks! Jennifer taught me how put it on better!”

“It’s nice to have a new student,” Jennifer smiled gently. “Of course, working on properly corrupting the poor dear will take time, but…”

As Richard’s eyes bulged, the knight apparently unable to process this newest of threats to his charge, I continued my work, Mountain watching me hammer with calm eyes.

Five extra days. And I’d be using every moment I had.

With all the comforting sounds around me, as Richard tried to speak with Katya on his feelings on her burgeoning friendship with Jennifer, with the smell of the forge burning and steel bending beneath my fingers, I could almost forget that I was a murderer.

------

The next day, I found myself in heaven.

“More books than I’ve ever seen…” I looked around the massive shelves around me, amazed by the sheer number of books resting on those wooden bookshelves.

“Yes, well,” Richard coughed, trying to hide his amusement at my awe. “You said you needed some reference material. So, I thought this would do the trick,” he waved around us.

The Chapel Library was as large as one of the castles. In fact, from the outside I’d assumed it was a castle. But the truth was far more incredible.

Books. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of books. Several floors of them. The gray stone under my feet made an odd ‘clomp-clomp’ sound as I went from shelf to shelf, grabbing the titles that I saw and adding to the pile in my arms.

“Do you know how hard it is to find some of these?” I said almost reverently. “These are priceless!”

“Then stop damn well piling them in your hands,” Richard grumbled. Chagrined, I placed them on a smooth wooden table. “The Chapel has one of the largest libraries in the whole of Turab, second only to the Dedicat University’s. But use of the books is restricted. Only certain personal are allowed in, and only in certain sections.”

“Why would you restrict any of this?” I flipped open a book on alchemical solutions, finding a more advanced version of the potions I used to combine metals into different alloys.

“Because of the invention of the damn printing press,” he pointed at a set of doors. “This place is full of things we don’t want getting into the general populace, much of it behind that door. And it was easy to prevent that when people had to handwrite every single page over thousands of hours. But now? A group of men can create hundreds of pages in the course of an afternoon. If anyone came here, and stole one of the more dangerous books of knowledge? They could distribute them to the populace before we’d even know what happened. Better to protect the knowledge from the start, than to deal with the aftermath.”

I was momentarily torn. Everything inside me screamed that hoarding these books was wrong. That keeping information from the people was just holding back civilization as a whole. But at the same time, Hasha had long since taught me the dangers of using knowledge unwisely. Simple runes could become the catalyst of far worse things after all. Alchemical potions to heal could easily become poisons if used incorrectly.

I decided not to comment, and simply copied as much information as I could in the three hours allotted to us. Alchemy, rune-making, metallurgy, and spirit summoning, anything that could help make Katya’s armor. Towards the end of the third hour I was almost done, only to realize something.

I couldn’t find the rune of connection. The one from the garden, the one that did something to the strength and joining of the runes.

Flipping through different texts, being gentler in the case of the more fragile books, I dug through the library as best as I could. Richard, noting my sped up pace, frowned.

“What are you looking for?”

“A rune of connection, the one keeping the garden in front of the main castle healthy. I think I can use it as a cheat, to fuse all the runes in Katya’s armor without needing to depend on more time-taking methods.”

“Rune of…” Richard shrugged. “Well that would probably be in the restricted section. Now come on. Times up.”

“Damn it,” I sighed sadly, but began putting away the books.

Still, the visit had ended with good results. With the notes I’d taken, and the insights of priests and wizards hundreds of years my senior, I should be able to make Katya’s armor that much faster.

I chuckled at the thought of those ancient men and women, and how they might have reacted to knowing that a half-orc was going to take their research and create something with it. I actually had the thought often, but it still made me smile.

When we got back, I’d begin incorporating these new techniques into Katya’s armor. One step at a time.

------

The next day, I was doing work on the gauntlets. The chestplate and backplate were cooling off, with the runes I’d place within them merging with the armor. The gauntlets, on the other hand, needed a lot of work. While armor on the whole tended to be very intricate over all, gauntlets and greaves, or hand and foot armor, need to be able to move with the wearer while still protecting them. This made them the worst parts to make in a time crunch. So, I was cheating.

I placed a diamond on top of some silk cloth I’d brought. Well, that Richard had bought. Then, I pressed my magic within the diamond. Crystals, thanks to the many facets, tend to reflect magic well, making it easier to bounce the energy within them. Slowly I sought out the carbon of the diamond. This part was part imagination, part physical magic, and part wishing very hard. I wanted to force the properties of the carbon within the diamond into the silk cloth, and force it to form as I wanted. Once done, I should have the sheet of pure carbon lattice. Not just a sheet actually, but over a million layers of sheets!

Of course, I might end up failing, and destroying a very expensive diamond. There was a reason I was doing this in the privacy of my workshop. While Hasha mixed more alchemy potions and Arthur made more sheets of chromoly steel, I’d see about finally making this dream of mine come true.

It had worked before, when I had transmutated cotton into steel. But what I was doing now was transmutation on another level. Not just transforming the silk, but doing it on the most basic of levels. Knowing it could work, should work based on my earlier experiments and research, wasn’t the same as making actually work.

If it did however… I pushed that thought away. I pushed away my hopes, my fears, and my feelings of inadequacy. When the realization that the chair I was sitting on rested on the spot where Andrea died, I pushed that away as well, hard as that was.

Transmutation magic, rune magic, blacksmithing magic, alchemy magic, they all only benefitted from a cold, logical mind. You sit, you wait, and you do it as clear minded as possible.

So I pushed it all away, made my focus as clear as I could, and began to do some damn magic.

My inner energy, the steel core that poured molten metal into my limbs slowly merged with the diamond. The carbon within was there for the taking. Then I reached into the silk cloth. I could feel the strength of that white piece of fabric. Despite its beauty, there was a large amount of tensile strength in it. It was why I’d picked after all. Sympathetic magic would make a connection between the silk cloths current strength, and its later durability.

Bit by bit, I let my magic permeate through the diamond and the cloth. My hands glowed a deep blue while they rested over the two objects. The glow intensified the more I felt my magic flow the way I needed.

Then, once I was sure I had enough of the structure of both objects down, I began the transmutation. Slowly, the diamond began to break. On the outside, it must have looked like the diamond was turning to motes of ash. On the molecular level, the carbon within the diamond was pressing into the silk. As I worked, I began the hardest part.

Slowly, I forced the silk cloth to follow my design. A carbon lattice layering into the thick weave, over and over. Molecule thick, pressing together, becoming stronger and stronger. My mind shuddered under the stress. Creating such detail, forcing the silk cloth to turn into such a different structure, was hard, even with the sympathetic connection. I kept calm. Over and over, I used the molten metal of my magic to form the crisscrossing form I needed.

Four hours later, I stepped out of my workshop. Hasha looked up from his alchemy set. Arthur stopped hammering. Mountain, Richard, Katya, and Jennifer, all sitting around the table that we’d dragged from the dining room, looked up as well.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” with a certain satisfaction, I held up a piece of cloth big enough to cover a door. “The strongest sheet of material in the world. With a tensile strength of over 130000, this can stop arrows with ease. It’s almost too strong.”

Katya clapped, smiling proudly. Mountain barked. Even Arthur nodded in fierce approval.

Richard, Jennifer, and Hasha started at me for a moment. Hasha hesitantly spoke.

“Char… if it’s so durable, so strong—”

“How are you going to cut it?” Jennifer finished for him. Richard nodded.

I stared at the room, the satisfied look on my face freezing. I stared at the sheet of black cloth in my hands, made to stop anything short of a dragon’s claws. The large, square shaped fabric that I’d need to cut to fit Katya.

“…damn it.”

------

Later, I began work on a personal project of mine. While Katya’s armor took up most of my time, I couldn’t help but want to finish one or two things for later.

After all, people had tried to kill me twice now. Best to make sure they didn’t succeed the third time.

So I stood in my workshop with Hasha, working on the first project in tools to prevent my murder.

“The exact amount, Char, is the key,” Hasha said as he slowly measured out the saltpeter. He was smiling as he did so. “Where did you get saltpeter anyways?”

Oh boy. This would go well. “I made it.”

Hasha froze. He looked at me, eyes widening. “You… made it?”

I gave him a sheepish look. “Uh, yes. I got the instructions from a book. A process where you take a drum affixed with a drain, valve, and filter at the bottom. You fill it with manure, urinate into it, then top it off with water. After about 10 months, dry it out on trays.“

Hasha stared at the saltpeter. “You’re saying that you... made this with your urine. And manure.”

“I ran out of the market-bought kind. This was all that was left.”

“Why did you even have it!?”

I winced. “It was just an experiment!”

Hasha blinked. Then he nodded. “Well that’s fine then. Seems the experiment went well, this is good saltpeter.”

Apparently I’d said the magic word.

I grinded the saltpeter with a mortar and pestle, turning it into a fine powder. Hasha did the same with the charcoal and sulfur. We calculated the weight of the powders. For one kilogram of our final product, we’d need 748 grams of saltpeter, 133 grams of charcoal, and 119 grams of sulfur.

Next, we moistened the powders, placed them in the mortar, and grinded them together with the pestle for 12 minutes. I took a minute to thank god for my workshop. If he’d done this outside, where Art was forging, a single stray spark could have lit the black powder.

We kept adding water in small increments, until the powder had the consistency of thick clay, forming it into a ball. Then, carefully using a sieve, we split the ball into several small pieces, putting them on the table.

“Okay,” said Hasha as we stared at the innocuous looking piles of black balls. “Now we just wait for it to dry. You have a bag ready?”

“Yes,” I took a brown leather bag off a shelf. “Put runes against fire and electricity on it.”

“Good man,” he patted me on the shoulder. “So… we’ve made black powder. And you have the powdered aluminum and ferrous oxide as well. I have to say, if I didn’t know how careful you are, I would feel nervous about giving you these.”

Despite the joking tone, he did sound worried.

“It’s all for later,” I sighed.

“What do you need an explosive compound for anyways?” Hasha asked nervously.

“I’m experimenting with tools for Katya,” I said. This was a half-truth at best, but a good one. “I figure she might want non-lethal options one day. So I’m going to use gunpower and skunk oil to create a bomb to disable opponents.”

Hasha winced. “Oy. You have a real hatred for her future opponents. Skunks have been known to knock dragons on their asses.”

I snorted at the imagery. Even as I did, I began planning for the next tool.

No one would ever get the drop on me again. Not without paying for it.

------

After that debacle, I had to come up with a way to cut the cloth I’d made. Hasha finally brought over a scapel and used that cut it to shape. The scapel, designed with runes Hasha hadn’t taught me yet to slice through anything, still managed to dull, and it took up a bit of time to slice through the carbon sheet. Still, it was worth it.

With the carbon sheet as support, I could make the armor even fast without sacrificing the strength of it. Katya preferred a style using her natural grace and speed to fight after all. And while chromoly steel was lighter than normal steel, it still had a certain amount of weight. Using carbon sheets, I could supplement the already strong chromoly steel, and allow her to move as fast as she wished.

We got unexpected help from Jennifer in the tailoring of the carbon sheets, and changed the design to fit some of her suggestions. The carbon sheet, which was a black colored material, was recolored with some yellow to evoke the look of a fist, making the ‘skirt’ of Katya’s armor evoke the symbol of her order.

With that recut, I focused once more on the more articulated pieces. I messed up a few times. No magic-user is perfect. But my mistakes only helped me learn.

Later, Katya was wearing the completed gauntlet. I buckled it to her wrist as she watched in excitement. We both sat in my workshop alone, the others doing something else. Katya watched patiently as I finished the attachments.

“How’s it feel?” I asked her.

She looked at it carefully. Polished to a bright silver sheen, it had an engraving of a line from the Chapel’s holy book etched onto the surface. ‘Doubt not that the Light shall crush evil with its radiance.’ A very ominous line, and fitting for a gauntlet in my opinion. Her fingers were covered in interlocking plates that went back into the wrist section, up to her arms. The glove of carbon sheets I’d managed to make her rested under the steel plates. I’d hidden the runes of the gauntlet under the plates of course. While runes did make impressive decorations, only a fool showed them off. A rune you could see, was a rune you could analyze, and potentially counter.

She twisted her wrist, going through the range of motion I’d taught her, and I could see that she had some trouble with the fingers. I wordlessly gestured, and she passed me her hand. I looked over the rivets on the fingers, loosening them slightly. Once I was done, I gestured for her to try again. This time she could move much more easily.

“So, you want to know what this can do?” I said with a smile.

“Yes,” Katya said eagerly.

I clenched my fist. “Like this. Push the Light into the gauntlet, and the runes will do the rest,” she raised her fist, getting it close to her fist. I panicked, grabbing her hand and pulling it away. “Wait! Point away from anything important, please.”

Now looking spooked, she did as I asked. For a moment nothing happened. Then, slowly, a bright white glow came from the top of her hand, resolving into a symbol. The kenaz symbol, representing fire, beacons, light, and life.

ᚲ- Kenaz

Slowly, the glow extended outward into a blade of Light attached to the top of her wrist. The blade was about six inches long, and buzzed as it glowed.

“Wow,” Katya’s eyes glowed in the Light. “That’s amazing.”

“You feel tired? I know you said manifesting the Light as a physical object can be exhausting.”

“No, I can’t even feel it.”

“Good. I put in a rune of mana regeneration, but that’s always a toss-up,” I sighed sadly. “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so runes of mana regeneration generally don’t work as you expect. The best I could do was make your use of it more efficient.”

“What else can it do?” She carefully swung the blade, watching silently slice through the air.

“Well, the default is the blade. But as you learn, it should be able to manifest anything you want, as long as you have the energy. Within reason of course.”

She nodded eagerly. “It’s so amazing that you can do all these things.”

“Blame Hasha and Arthur,” I watched her slash outwards with her the blade, moving into a pattern of attack. “And all the books of course. I’m smart, but I wouldn’t be able to do these things without the research of older and wiser men and women all over the world. I’m still learning, but having the resources Hasha gave me have helped.”

“Hmm,” Katya seemed to think for a moment. “Char? Where are your parents?”

I froze. It took me a moment to decide how to answer. “They, uh, they’re dead. Killed by a mob when I was young.”

“Oh,” Katya gave me a sad look. “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “It’s a common story. A lot of the children around here are being raised by uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters… anyone who was old enough. After the plague, a lot of older people died.”

“…My parents died in the plague too,” Katya bit her lip. I didn’t reply, waiting for her to continue. “I was found in the house by the Arch-Bishop. He saw me in a vision, and knew I was the Prophesied Child. He took me in. And Richard raised me.”

“Arthur raised me,” I gave her a smile. “I guess we both had parents after all.”

“Heh,” she giggled. “Yes, I suppose we did… Char?”

“Yes?”

“What happened?” When I gave her a confused look, she clarified. “On the day that Jennifer came. You were sad. You just seem… like something very bad happened.”

My breath left me entirely. She’d noticed. Somehow, despite trying to hide it, she’d noticed.

I stared at her, wide-eyed. She stepped forward to place a hand on my shoulder. “Char… You don’t have to tell me. But I’m here if you need to talk about it.”

I looked over at that spot on my floor. Where Andrea had died. After trying to kill me. The hand on my shoulder tightened.

“I…” there was something in my throat. I swallowed it down. “I killed someone that day.”

She didn’t look away from me. She simply listened.

The story of that night came out. I left out Jennifer and the demon. I simply spoke of the assassin trying to kill me, and of my attempt to defend myself.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Katya took my cheek in hand looked into my eyes, friendly smile in place. “She tried to kill you Char. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, but—”

“But?”

“I still feel wrong.”

She nodded. “Good. Killing someone should never feel good.”

“…Have you killed someone before?”

“Yes,” the answer surprised me, as did the sad smile on her face. “I told you. Assassins have tried to kill me before. And Richard was late once. I had to save myself, like you did.”

“I… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Katya patted my cheek. “You just have to talk about it. Tell people. And remember that you were just defending yourself. Doing bad things for the right reasons, as long as it really is for the right reason, is okay. The Light demands its followers find balance between what is right, and what is lying justification,” she looked deeper into my eyes. “Did you want to kill her?”

“No,” the word came out so easily. And yet, I felt relief at the sound of it. “I didn’t want to. I just wanted to stop her, and I reached for the first thing I thought would…”

She wrapped me in a hug. Feeling her against me, so small but trying comfort me, made me feel like a child. “It’s okay Char.”

Calming down, I nodded. We stayed like that. After a moment, she stepped back and gave me a bright smile. “Sometimes, all you need is a friend to talk to about this stuff.”

“Haven’t had too many of those,” I admitted softly.

“Well you have me,” she giggled. “And Mountain. And Richard!”

I groaned at the last. After a moment, I asked a question that had been on my mind. “Uh, Katya? Why did you decide to trust me? I mean, you knew me for a day before you decided I was the one to make you armor. What made you so sure I was the one you wanted?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Because I saw how much you loved it,” when I frowned in confusion she continued. “Blacksmithing. You probably don’t know, but even though you don’t smile a lot, you always smile when you work.”

“I smile,” I protested.

“You smile now,” she said mischievously. “Around us. But you never smile at the Chapel, or when we go out into the city. Just here, and when you work.”

“Why would I smile when I’m not happy?”

An awkward silence followed. Katya finally nodded.

“There are a lot of reason why I chose you Char. You love making armor, which means I knew you’d do your best. You’re smart, so I knew your armor would be good,” she blushed. “But I also thought maybe you were a nice person who needed a friend. And I needed one too.”

That made me smile once again. She really was naïve. Choosing a person to make her armor because she wanted a friend of all things. But then, I’d learned I liked that about her.

I coughed, turning around so she wouldn’t see me smiling, and picked up the other piece of armor from the table.

“Well, I suppose it’s time for work again.” I gruffly raised the other gauntlet. “Now. While the gauntlets will help you with your magic, and also have runes to aid your strength and increase durability, I want you to understand everything about them. If you ever have a problem in the field, then you need to know what it is so you can fix it. So look.”

Raising the other gauntlet for her to see the runes within, I tried to regain my stoicism.

Still. It was nice to have a friend.