The first gauntlet was a hammer. Crude, effective, a testament to raw destructive potential. I had tested it in the forgotten shafts, where the mountain's groans swallowed the sound of splintering rock and buckling steel supports. It amplified my will into brute force. It was a start. But a hammer is a tool for demolition, not creation. I required an instrument of absolute control.
I returned to the forge as the mine's deepest vents exhaled their foul, sulfurous breath, a miasma that passed for dawn in this subterranean kingdom. Bran was waiting. The old blacksmith, whose hands had known nothing but the shaping of shackles and mining picks, now trembled with a new and terrible purpose. The slag-fire of the forge painted his face in shifting hues of orange and red, but it could not warm the fear that had taken root in his eyes. He had seen the first gauntlet. He understood this was no longer a theoretical exercise in metallurgy and whispered heresy. This was the forging of a revolution.
In his hands, however, was pride. He had already laid out the finest ores, the heat-treated plates, the collection of scavenged components we would need. He knew what was coming.
I placed the first gauntlet—a brute of blackened iron and exposed cabling—on the anvil. It clanged with a sound of finality. "The right hand is the fist," I said, my voice resonating strangely through the fused iron mask that had become my only face. "The left must be the scalpel."
I laid out the requirements, and with each word, I saw the fear in Bran's eyes war with the craftsman's challenge.
"Balanced articulation," I began, gesturing to the crude joints of the first piece. "It must move as my own hand does. Every joint, every knuckle, a perfect extension of my will."
"Heat conduction plates. Woven into the palm and fingertips, capable of drawing energy from the core and focusing it."
"Internal spark coils for ignition. Self-contained, instantaneous."
"Reinforced braces. The recoil from a channeled energy burst will be immense. The arm must be protected, the shock absorbed and redistributed."
I paused, leaning closer, my mask's unblinking eyes meeting his. "And finally, hidden engraving channels. Microscopic, along the inner plates. For the arcane circuitry."
Bran swallowed, the sound loud in the oppressive heat. "The first one… it broke things, Victor. This one…"
"This one," I finished for him, my gaze drifting to the hungry fire of the forge, "won't just amplify force. It will create it."
We worked in a frantic, clandestine rhythm, a silent understanding passing between us. The forge was our secret sun, glowing orange until it bled into a furious, consuming red. The air cracked with sparks. Metal screamed on the anvil, a tortured sound that was lost in the greater groans of the mine. This was not the honest labor of a blacksmith; it was a dark alchemy, a birthing of something unnatural.
I integrated the components myself, my scarred fingers moving with a surgeon's precision. The arcane shards, scavenged from the sanctum pulsed with a sickly green light as I set them into their housings. They were fragments of a greater power, and they hummed with a resentful energy. The pressure chamber, a masterpiece of desperation, was crafted from the cannibalized pneumatic pistons of a rock-borer. It was crude, but it would hold.
Then came the true heart of the weapon. I took up a fine-tipped engraving tool. Dousing the plate in cooling oil, I began to etch the heat rune. It was not a symbol known to any living sorcerer. It was a character from the language I had decoded in the deep places, a tongue of pure power that predated man. As I carved the final stroke, the rune flared with a soft, white light, and a wave of palpable heat washed over us. The unnatural glow spread like a virus across the other metal plates, flowing through the channels I had so carefully prepared.
Bran, wiping sweat and soot from his brow, stared at the assembled gauntlet. It lay on the quenching stone, steam coiling from its intricate form. The green light of the shards and the white pulse of the rune gave it a semblance of life. "This one is alive," he murmured, his voice a mix of awe and terror.
I looked up from my work, the forge-light reflecting off my mask. "No," I corrected him, the word flat and cold. "It is obedient."
When the last hiss of steam had faded, the gauntlet lay in silence. It was a thing of dark beauty—burnished gunmetal, intricate wiring, and the soft, menacing glow of its internal power. It was sleeker than its brother, more refined, more lethal. I slid my left hand into it. The fit was perfect.
Instantly, I felt it connect. Not just to my arm, but to my will. The pressure coils emitted a low, resonant hum, a vibration that traveled up my arm and into my chest. The heat rune on the back of the hand pulsed in time with my own heartbeat, a steady, rhythmic thrum of latent power. A brief, sharp spark of blue-white energy flickered along the fingertips, a sound like cracking ice. It was the birth cry of a new and terrible weapon.
I flexed my fingers. Inside the articulated metal, my own hand moved with perfect, unhindered grace. Yet, with that simple motion, I felt the very air in the forge grow heavy, the world itself seeming to shrink, to become a smaller, more pliable thing within my grasp.
My eyes fell upon a discarded length of iron chain lying near the anvil—a remnant of a prisoner's shackle. A symbol. I picked it up. Its weight was familiar, a dull and brutish heft. With a light squeeze, a thought more than a physical exertion, I activated the heat plates.
There was no sound, only that steady, low hum from within the gauntlet. The iron links in my grasp began to glow, first a dull cherry, then a brighter orange. The metal softened, losing its rigidity. The chain sagged, dripping. Within seconds, it was a molten stream of liquid fire, pooling on the stone floor with a sizzle.
Bran stumbled back, his face a mask of horror. The tool had become a weapon before his very eyes. "Victor… this is—"
"A tool," I cut him off, my voice sharp. I let the last drops of molten iron fall, my gauntleted hand perfectly steady. "Nothing more."
It was then that we heard it. Voices, clipped and arrogant, echoing down the access tunnel. The scuff of heavy boots on stone. A patrol. Unscheduled. Guards.
Bran panicked. His eyes darted around the forge, at the tools, at the two gauntlets sitting in plain sight. Discovery meant more than a whipping. It meant the executioner's block for him, and for me… something far worse.
I, however, remained calm. Fear is a luxury for those who have other options. I had only my intellect and the weapons it had wrought. With swift, economical movements, I extinguished the forge fire, plunging us into the dim glow of a single emergency lantern. The tools were swept into a hidden recess behind a loose stone. The first gauntlet was concealed beneath a pile of slag. The second remained on my hand, a comforting weight. I pushed Bran into the deepest shadows of the workshop.
"Say nothing. Breathe nothing," I whispered, my voice a hiss of cold command. "I will control the narrative."
The footsteps stopped outside. One guard, his scarred leather armor creaking, stepped into the forge. His name was Draavos, a sergeant whose cruelty was matched only by his laziness. His cracked red visor scanned the space, his nostrils flaring.
"Smells like you're working late, smith," he grunted, his eyes landing on Bran trembling in the corner. "What are you hiding? Stealing scrap for a few extra rations?"
He strode over to Bran and shoved him hard against the wall. Bran let out a small cry. Draavos laughed, a wet, ugly sound. He began to kick idly at piles of metal and equipment, his boots clanging against discarded plates. My gaze remained fixed, my mind a cold engine of calculation. I was observing, weighing variables. The second guard remained outside, his silhouette visible against the tunnel's dim light. One target.
Draavos's boot struck a loose floor stone—the one concealing the molds for the gauntlets. He grunted with interest, bending down to pry at it.
The variable had become a threat. The calculation was complete.
I stepped from the shadows.
Draavos turned, a sneer twisting his lips as he saw my masked figure. Years of unchallenged authority had made him careless. "Slave," he spat, his hand resting on the baton at his belt. "Kneel."
I did not reply. I raised my left hand, the new gauntlet gleaming in the gloom. He scoffed, mistaking it for a piece of armor, a slave's pathetic attempt at defiance. It was the last mistake he would ever make.
His scoff died in his throat as my palm ignited. The heat rune flared, and the spark coils discharged with a sharp crack. A nimbus of concentrated, shimmering heat enveloped my hand. Before he could scream, I grabbed him by the throat.
The sound was obscene. Steam hissed as his flesh met the superheated plates. His armor began to glow where my fingers touched his gorget. He struggled for a few brief, frantic seconds, his eyes wide with disbelief and agony. Then, with a flex of my will and the gauntlet's articulated might, I tightened my grip. Bone cracked. He went limp, a dead weight in my grasp.
Beyond the forge, the roar of the deep-mine excavators and the scheduled hiss of a pressure-release valve masked the brief, violent struggle completely.
Bran stared, his mouth agape. He was horrified, yes, but beneath it, I saw something else flicker in his eyes. Awe.
This was not an act of rage. It was an act of engineering. A problem had presented itself, and I had engineered its solution.
First, the body. I held his face to the gauntlet's palm until the flesh was an unrecognizable ruin of charred tissue. Identity: removed. His spine was too rigid to fit the narrow confines of the coal chute. A calculated strike with the first gauntlet solved that. With a dull crack, the body became pliable. I sent it sliding down the chute, its journey ending in the slag furnace far below. Evidence: removed.
His metal sergeant's badge had fallen to the floor. I picked it up and dropped it into the still-glowing heart of the forge. It melted into a meaningless silver puddle. Trace evidence: removed. I used a rag to wipe the soot and ash from the floor with controlled precision, my movements timed with the rhythmic bursts of steam from the nearby pipes to mask any sound.
Bran finally found his voice, a strangled whisper. "Victor… you've killed a soldier."
I turned to him, the faint green circuitry in my right gauntlet and the pulsing white rune in my left casting an unholy light on my mask.
"No," I said, my voice as cold and hard as the iron that sheathed me. "I removed an obstacle."
By morning, it had begun. A whisper, threading through the desperate, stifling air of the mines. Sergeant Draavos was missing. His partner claimed he had simply vanished. But another prisoner, a terrified wretch working near the forges, swore he saw something in the shadows. He spoke of a figure with hands of iron, crushing a soldier like he was brittle wood.
The stories mutated as they spread. "The mask did it." "No—the machine-man." "No," another whispered, his voice trembling with a new, strange kind of hope. "Doom."
A new word was born. Not yet a name. A prophecy.
That night, I stood alone in the dark forge, the fires banked low. I wore both gauntlets. The right, a brutalist engine of force. The left, a sleek instrument of creation and annihilation. I flexed my hands. They hummed in perfect, lethal harmony—technology and sorcery intertwined. They were no longer tools. They were a part of me.
I gazed at them, the metal gleaming ominously in the torchlight, and I felt the tectonic shift in my own fate.
"Strength forged," I murmured to the shadows. "Fear planted."
A low hum resonated from the gauntlets, a response to my own thoughts.
"The world has begun whispering my name."
In the deep, ancient tunnels of the mine, the flickering lanterns dimmed for a moment, then flared bright again—as if the very mountain was acknowledging its new warlord.