Teddy was tired. Not a feeling he was accustomed to having in a long time. Neither was he used to be being dirty and slightly smelly. They had worked nonstop on James’s armour for almost two whole days.

He was climbing the stairs after Orcnig and Auster having met her for the first time she was leading him to join the others who might just be waking up about now. She told him the rest of the team had kept busy with talking to Greenstone and then almost a day and a half of shopping. He carried on his back a simple sack, in which James’ armour clanked and rattled, he could have put it in his storage power but as the family shared the storage now he didn’t want James to know that it was complete and to see it without Teddy being there.

He finally made it to the top of the stairs, he felt exhausted but not as much as he had been in the oppressive underground. He stepped between the two Stonewallers who had politely waited for him outside the door and he pushed it open. He was greeted by the smell of breakfast cooking over a magic hot rock they were using in place of a camp fire. The others saw him and all got up from where they were relaxing, including Ragnar.

Unknown to Teddy when they had taken the room it was barren with only the discarded wrappers of food from a research team that had inhabited it before them. The room now showed the results of Kyra’s extended shopping trip. There was homely cloth on stone furniture with cushions to make it comfy, a painting that had taken her fancy and a few coloured glow stones.

“Ohh babe!” Kyra said sympathetically on seeing him. “Eww babe.” She said, less sympathetically when she hugged him and felt the grime and smelt him. She then checked the interface. “Oh babe!” Back to sympathetic when she realised his stamina was almost at rock bottom and his mana not far behind. “What happened?” She said as she poured him a coffee which the bronze rank variety was infused with a stamina potion effect.

“I think being down there, is tougher on us than we realised. My aura control has taken a pounding.”

“We are impressed with Mr Mitchell, he displayed a worthy knowledge of craft and a keenness to work which we value. He was relentless in pursuing detail and accepted nothing less than perfection.” Orcnig replied, also sounding weary but not as beat up as Teddy did. Teddy passed him his cup of coffee that Kyra had just poured and waved for another.

“Is it done then?” James asked excitedly.

Kyra had just finished pouring Teddy another mug of coffee, touching her hand to his arm lovingly as she gave it. Teddy bumped foreheads with her and took a large gulp, he smiled at James. “It is, want to see? Kyra can I have a table please?”

The floor was made out of stone, as were the walls and ceilings, everything in the underground carved city was stone. The residents made it homely by adding tapestries, rugs and paintings. Coloured lamps added variety as well as the only sources of light deeper down. Kyra raised a hand and a solid rectangle of stone raised out of the floor, when it was at waist height she flipped her hand and pushed it down and the majority of the inside of the rectangular block dropped back down, leaving a tabletop and four legs, she swished her hand to the side like she was wiping dust away and the top smoothed.

“Impressive.” Orcnig rumbled then raised a long arm at the table and made a fist. Suddenly the table popped with engravings all up and down the legs, the top was carved in a wide banner around the edge with anvils, hammers and tongs, animals were carved between in different perceptions of depth within. The centre of the table was suddenly polished mirror smooth. “A table fit for the unveiling.” He nodded to Kyra.

Rather than taking it as an insult to her work Kyra was fascinated by the changes he made. She recognised it was a power not unlike her earth shaping but not an essence power and she wanted to learn more.

Teddy unslung the bag from his shoulder and placed it on the table, he undid the knot and pulled out the armour.

He pulled it out by the hand guard and James was relieved to see the bear claw engraving, he had an irrational feeling the engravings would have disappeared with the rank up. The vambrace forearm section came next and he saw the wing and scorpion with the fanged human skull on it. The smooth ball that went around is elbow was next followed by the section that covered his upper arm, this is where it started to change, the lightning bird was still in place but a new section of armour overlapped the top, not impeding the design. That middle section was overlapped by the shoulder piece, a large round section that had a wide flange at the top near the neck, a lip to catch any weapons sliding towards the head. As he continued to pull it was followed by two huge plates of metal and James realised with joy it was an armoured panel that would cover the top right section of his torso.

“That’s amazing! This is incredible, it looks fantastic and so much space for more engraving!”

“Heh, funny you should say that.” Teddy said with a tired smile.

He still had hold of the arm piece and he twisted it over so the front of the armour showed then he stepped back taking the bag with him so the armour laid on the beautiful table for James to inspect.

The front section of armour was similar to the rear, a heavy, wide leather strap came over the shoulder holding the front and back pieces together but allowing flexibility for James to raise his shoulder. The front plate covered from collarbone to the bottom of his rib cage and across to his sternum. There was another thick, heavy wide leather strap with a large metal buckle that went around the rest of his rib cage. All the armour was beautifully made, with a bordered edge all the way round and a high finish. The front and back panels were shaped to fit his body perfectly. There was one detail that gave James pause. In the middle of the front panel, taking up all the room on the plate, was an engraving.

Teddy saw his brothers eyebrows furrow and he winced slightly. “Now before you say anything, you might recognise this from the front doors of the council chambers, this is deemed a great honour, not just anyone gets to wear the sigil of the Stonewallers. This is a Mud Rhino, it’s one of the only creatures that can come and go from the array and so one of their only companions other than each other. The rarity of your item and that I could withstand to be down there and so you could too technically, meant they honoured you with the engraving.”

The Mud Rhino signet wasn’t just an engraving. Made of the same metal as the armour it stood proud, the thickness of it was around the width of a finger. It was the naked skull of a rhino looking inwards towards the sternum, the jawline near the bottom of the plate. The massive horns on its head curved right back, following the curve of the armour with the second horn smaller but paralleling it on the inside.

James said nothing for a moment, standing there with his arms folded and an unreadable expression on his face.

“Why are they able to come and go when no one else can?” He finally asked.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“See for yourself.” Teddy responded, motioning for James to touch the armour. He did, tracing the long horn of the rhino.

Item: [Pauldron of Menagerie] (bronze rank [growth], legendary)

Armour that has been re-forged by the hands of a master armourer, the care and detail put into the reforging by a family member has deepened the connection to the user enhancing its protection. Armour that when developed will increase the effect of transformation powers.

This item is bound to you and cannot be used by anyone else.

Effect: When engraved by a magical armourer (or mystical tattooist’s with the necessary skills) will grant the wearer benefits to transformation powers. Benefits will be limited to size and skill of engraving. Once an engraving is in place it cannot be removed. Engravers must be at least equal rank to the item, higher rank engravers will produce a stronger effect.

Effect (Bear Claw [improved]): When making physical attacks with this item it will create a slashing effect that will cause the [Bleeding] condition to occur. Against targets that do not bleed extra damage of the resonating force type will be added.

Effect (Eagle wing): When making attacks that involve a wing it will sheathe the wing in metalled blades. The attack will be much stronger than without this item. Attacks will have resonating force, disruptive force and trace transcendent damage. Any transformation to wings will include these effects. Ranged effects will be augmented by this accessory. [This effect cannot be improve until silver-gold ascension but will still need upgrade materials per ritual of ascension]

Effect (Lightning [improved]): For a high mana cost imbue attacks with an electric effect. Small chance of paralysis and ongoing muscle spasms.

Effect (Venom of the Merciless Desert [improved]): Inflicts poison damage. Chance to inflict [Milk of the Cacti]. Chance to inflict [Greyscale]. Can only affect living enemies with blood. Must penetrate enemy to inflict poison and [Milk of the Cacti]. Contact with the venom has a smaller chance of causing [Greyscale].

Effect (Armour of the Mud Rhino): When activated it covers the user with the armour of the Mud Rhino. Legendary for its protective properties the armour is near impenetrable by regular weapons of its rank, highly resistant to disruptive damage and resonating force damage. Spell damage is mostly reflected from this armour except in the case of some silver and higher rank powers. This effect allows the mana cost of the use to be negligible and remains only a ‘partial’ body transformation even though it covers the entire body. Power cooldown is also reset immediately after dissipating the armour.

[Bleeding] (affliction, wounding, blood): Deals ongoing damage by causing or increasing blood loss. As a wounding effect, this condition absorbs or negates an amount of incoming healing, after which this affliction immediately ends.

[Milk of the Cacti] (affliction, blood): Causes afflicted enemies to hallucinate and a chance to cause damage to themselves by convulsion.

[Greyscale] (affliction, incapacitating): Affliction that spreads across the skin. Causes joints to lock up and impairs mobility.

Growth Conditions (silver):

Bound user must be at least silver rank.

8 kilograms of mid grade (silver rank) star-fall silver

200 silver-rank iron quintessence gems

200 silver-rank magic quintessence gems

100 silver-rank animal based quintessence gems (per engraving)

[100 bear quintessence]

[100 wing quintessence]

[100 lightning quintessence]

[100 venom quintessence]

[100 rhino quintessence]

2000 silver rank spirit coins

Gold rank Artificer

Ritual of Silver ascension.

“So they can come and go because their hide are so magically resistant?” James said and Orcnig nodded.

“Oh we’ve got to see this!” Kyra exclaimed, reading the interface along with James.

James picked up the armour and unbuckled it, he slipped his arm in and twisted his back sharply to fling the strap round which he caught. He did the buckle up in the front then while he was looking down traced over the Rhino signet with his finger.

“Damn that looks good.” Teddy said, walking around him. Orcnig was nodding appreciatively.

“Well lets see what the magic armour looks like then.” Kyra prompted.

James concentrated for a moment and suddenly he transformed, they were used to parts of his body transforming into various parts of other animals. This was similar but more on a line with his full body transformation, it seemed to expand from his chest plate, his whole body produced formed plates to cover each segment of his body, similar to how any other armour would. The joints were incredibly flexible as he moved, even punching the air in front of him to show it didn’t slow him down at all. It was a dull grey colour with darker edges, it was rough and textured like the skin of a rhino. The only parts of his body that weren’t covered in the armour were the pauldron down his right arm and his head.

“Yup, that looks badass.” Teddy said.

“Agreed, a good looking set of armour.” Kyra said.

“The signet.” Lucy said. “Look it’s changed.”

The mud rhino when James had put on the armour was the skull and horns of a Mud Rhino, now that he had used the power it was a fully armoured Mud Rhino head, like the ones on the doors of the council chamber, with armour plates on the cheeks, chin, lips and eyebrows.

“Well that’s not all it’s got.” James said.

A moment later his head was wrapped from behind by the same armour, flexible plates all around the neck kept it mobile. It came over the top of his head and stopped, keeping his face open. The top looked like the structure of a rhino skull, two small token horns a few inches long where the rhino’s would be.

Kyra pulled out her hand mirror and pulled the edges until it formed a floor length mirror. James did some turns to see how it looked, dropped the helmet and spun again.

“Mhhmhhm damn I look good.” James said

“Well we’ve established you look good.” Kyra said striding to an empty space. She held her hands low and a sword and buckler shield appeared. “Shall we see if it works?”

James smiled and stepped forward. Kyra didn’t know what to think as he didn’t pull a weapon but she figured he had a trick up his sleeve. She swung overhead at him and he caught it on his vambrace. It slid down and she swung back and over again and he didn’t even raise his arm, letting it hit his shoulder as he sidestepped and it skidded and sparked all down the pauldron. She repeated the swing and this time he raised his left hand, covered in the armour like a glove and simply caught the blade. Kyra raised her eyebrows. She snatched the blade back and swiped hard left and right. He raised his arms like a boxer and the blade skittered off each time, once off his Pauldron and once off the rhino armour not leaving so much as a scratch. She dropped back and threw a mirror shard, since getting to bronze it was now a fistful of shards, they didn’t catch anywhere and simply bounced off.

“Hey James” Teddy said.

James turned and found Teddy’s Dimension blade coming down on him. He raised his pauldron and deflected the blade. Teddy put a burst of speed in and swiped past James’ torso. It left what looked like a heat scar but it didn’t penetrate. Everyone backed off.

“Yeh I think that will do really well.” James said.

He dropped the armour. He transformed his left hand into a bear paw instantly and then back, just to check the no cooldown effect of the armour. He turned to Orcnig.

“Thankyou, it’s an honour to wear.” He turned back to Teddy. “Lacks the tactical flexibility of being able to make multiple transformations, can’t learn to rely on it or I’ll miss other chances.” He used his left hand to feel the chest plate and the shoulder armour. “But I love it, thankyou, both of you. It remains my most prized possession.”

Auster went to Orcnig and whispered in his ear but she didn’t account for their enhanced hearing.

“Might we suggest the pit in the under city?”

“Hey sorry but we can hear like really well.” Kyra said. “What’s the pit?”

“Auster speaks out of turn. The Pit is where we send our delinquent youths to work out their issues. It is not right to suggest it to you.”

“What’s in the pit then? What do you put in there if you send your youths to work out issues?” Lucy asked.

The two Stonewallers looked at each other.