Going by the new and much flashier sale sign, he was marketing them as civilian goods made to military standards, whilst selling them for an even lower price.

Zel felt a strange sense of pride over owning an early, unmodified version of the Sturmgandr.

Entering the smithy, nothing resembling an armored sleeve was to be seen. Only the three smiths, clearly having awaited her. Brief greetings were exchanged before words turned to the matter of her order, the smiths immediately steering towards her specifications with a tone that made her think they had for some reason failed to fulfil them.

This, however, turned out to be a hasty assumption on her part.

“We’re quite certain your defensive techniques will work even with our fully plated design for the glove,” said the one with an eyepatch.

“...And how’d you achieve that, exactly?” Zel questioned, dubious and curious in equal measure.

“We uh, assumed that your defensive Fog magic is at least vaguely adjacent to normal Fog and substituted a Fog-writing emitter for you in testing, with the symbol set to a flat plate over the top of the gauntlet. Took a couple iterations to get it right an’ we burned through a coupla of them aether gems you left us, but that’s why we asked for ‘em in the first place...” Gen began, visibly thinking through what he was saying as he did so in a way that made it obvious he was… Not quite lying, but he was obviously trying to avoid saying something.

“Now, as for the gun…” Damaya butted in with a sigh, leaning away from a wall as he glanced towards Gen.

“It’s not damaged, is it?” asked Zel with genuine concern.

“Oh gods no, it would be a terrible stain upon the manufacturers if a little Fulgurkinesis was enough to bust one of those barrels,” Gen cut in. “What Damaya here’s trying to say is that while working on your new armor sleeve, we took the liberty to do some work on your gun as well to help make them fit together. No extra charge, of course.”

“Well what are you waiting for?” Zel raised an eyebrow. “I want to see it.”

The G-Kaisers exchanged looks, nodded, and Sarz walked into the back of the shop, to a sectioned-off portion of it. He returned with an object the shape and size of an arm wrapped in lustrous black and golden fabric, its metallic threads gleaming in the light.

He set it down on a nearby workbench, looking to Zelsys to approach. Only when she did, the smith stepped away and gestured for her to unwrap the artifact.

Cold, segmented metal, held in place by silver rivets. It sang the slight notes of cold-iron beneath her fingers, eldritch runes pulsing dull grey to the rhythm of her heartbeat as a familiar thrum enveloped her hands.

Stiff leather straps, thick and clearly concealing some sort of internal frame.

The gauntlet, imposing and striking, possessed a black underglove and thick articulated armor over the entire hand in addition to the vambrace, leaving only the palm unprotected by solid metal…

...And yet, it rivaled in no way the steel-barreled sword of vengeance which was mounted atop the vambrace. Despite the engravings, the polish, and all the prettying-up that had been done to it, Zelsys still felt it to be not just a gaunt-cannon, but hers.

One thing stood out in particular.

“What’s that hole in the side?” she asked bluntly, pointing to the culprit as she looked up at the G-Kaisers. “Actually, what exactly did “some work” entail?”

“The engraved outer sleeve isn’t the actual barrel, but a part of the kinetic absorption assembly. If you work the bolt you’ll notice that…” Sarz began an explanation, but midway through his sentence, Zel worked the bolt. A slot half the size of the outer one came into view, and from within it erupted a geyser of Fog and hot air. When the obstruction cleared, she saw that the inside of the chamber was not visible through the slot - only the glyph-covered cold-iron of some essentech mechanism.

“...it doesn’t open up to the chamber. We’ve disguised the vent for the kinetic recycler as an ejection port. It would be pointless to try explaining the specifics without dismantling the thing and that’d take forever, so I’ll just ask you this: Have you seen those big pilebunkers the tankmen have on their arms?”

Zel nodded.

“Right,” he continued, “Those turn the unit’s engine output of destabilized essentia into kinetic energy. This mechanism works backwards, it turns some of the shell’s recoil impulse into aether for you to use, stores it in the shoulder piece, and the remaining impulse is distributed as usual. Might seem like overcompensation, but it’ll let you use much hotter loads without the risk of self-harm or catastrophic structural failure in the harness like your last one.”

“So why does it need to release exhaust if-” Zel began, but the monk-noble interrupted her.

“Why do you exhale Fog if the whole point of a breathing technique is to pull Aether out of the air? Why does a fire give off smoke or an engine releases exhaust?” he countered with his own question. “Because there is no such thing as perfect efficiency, and if we hadn’t added a vent it would’ve built up and gunked up the essentia channels inside the recoil absorber. And don’t worry, you can shut it off, we included a prebaked mnemoglyph for that command.”

“That’s enough, Damaya,” Sarz cut off the younger man, both literally and figuratively stepping in. “You’ve already spilled information that could get us in serious trouble. Our customers needn’t know everything about their orders.”

“Who cares?” Gen laughed. “It’s not as if the federationists even know we exist or that we worked with Him, and they certainly don’t have the stones to come after us. I could lay out every detail of the internal mechanism and I doubt anyone who happened to overhear would remember enough to build something functional, lest you forget that even we needed mnemoglyphs to put replicate Zero’s-”

Sarz cleared his throat, cutting off his comrade in the middle of his ill-advised rant.