Chapter 381: One With Darkness
Kael removed Frost and spent the next hour using Brokk’s Hammer to repair the damaged mesh. The broken wire had not been completely lost, allowing Living Memory and the hammer to draw the metal back into its original shape before restoring its alignment with the surrounding strands.
Once he was satisfied that no hidden damage remained, he replaced Frost with Fire.
The reaction was different and, at first, considerably more promising. Heat spread through the mesh as soon as the Rune activated, and the Malachor responded exactly as expected. The coat became tougher across his entire body without growing rigid enough to interfere with his movements.
Kael struck the outside of his forearm, then pressed his fingers against the leather. The reinforced material resisted both impacts far more effectively than before.
"This one might actually work," he said. "The reinforcement is consistent, and nothing is locking around the joints."
Andre glanced up from his workbench. His eyes settled briefly upon Kael’s shoulder before he returned to whatever he had been working on without comment.
Kael frowned at him. "What was that look?"
"Nothing worth interrupting yer successful experiment over."
The answer immediately made Kael suspicious. Before he could ask what the dwarf meant, the smell of heated leather reached him.
A thin wisp of smoke curled from his shoulder. Kael twisted to examine it and found the edge of one leather panel beginning to darken where the heat had gathered beneath the surface.
"Oh. That might be a problem."
The flaw became more obvious the longer Fire remained active. The coat had not become rigid, which was good. Malachor strengthened in the heat while retaining enough flexibility for Kael to move normally, but the temperature showed no sign of stabilizing.
Black Basilisk leather was naturally resistant to heat. That resistance had allowed Kael’s old jacket to withstand flames and elevated temperatures that would have ruined ordinary leather, but resistant did not mean immune.
After several minutes, the entire coat radiated enough heat to distort the air around him. Smoke began rising from several seams, while the reinforced scales grew hot enough to threaten the leather and thread holding them in place.
Andre finally pointed toward him. "Unless yer trying to turn it into charcoal armor, ya should probably stop."
"I noticed the smoke," Kael said as he reached for the Rune. "I was waiting to see whether the temperature would stabilize."
"It didn’t."
"Yes, Andre. I gathered that from the coat attempting to cook itself."
"Would cook you alongside it if ya wear it and use the rune like that."
Kael deactivated Fire before the damage became permanent. The glow faded through the mesh, leaving the Malachor hot beneath the leather, and he removed the Rune from its socket.
Andre watched him set it aside. "So, what did we learn from nearly ruining a second section of the coat?"
𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚
"That socketing Fire directly into the weave is stupid. Frost is dangerous for a different reason, but the result is the same."
Kael stared at the empty socket as the distinction finally became clear. Influencing the Malachor through the Fire and Frost systems in his gauntlets was useful because the effect remained localized and controlled. He could decide how much energy entered the material, direct it toward a specific section and stop the flow whenever he wanted.
Placing either Rune directly into the coat changed the entire relationship. The Malachor mesh became part of the Rune’s active structure, continuously generating and distributing the elemental effect rather than briefly borrowing its temperature.
A properly completed weave might have survived that strain. Kael’s did not possess enough individual channels to distribute the power safely, leaving the thicker wires to absorb far more energy than they had been designed to carry.
"So this is another problem caused by the wires being too thick," Kael muttered. "I’m beginning to hate the word incomplete."
Andre’s mouth curved beneath his beard. "Good. Hatred is an excellent reason to improve."
Kael decided not to give the dwarf the satisfaction of answering and tried Stone next.
That experiment lasted approximately six seconds.
The Rune activated, and the entire coat hardened around him. Kael smiled when he felt its resistance increase, but the expression disappeared the moment he attempted to raise his arm. The sleeve barely moved.
He pulled harder and managed to lift it approximately two inches before the Malachor mesh locked against itself. The coat had not become literal stone, but the reinforcement had grown so rigid that the leather surrounding it could no longer bend properly.
Kael attempted to lean forward. His waist moved only slightly, leaving him trapped in a posture that resembled someone wearing armor several sizes too small.
Andre leaned against his workbench and studied him. "Very intimidating. Enemies will flee the moment they see ya standing perfectly still."
"Enjoy this while it lasts," Kael said, fighting to lower his raised arm. "You’re the one who’ll have to explain why your workshop contains a statue wearing several Epic ingots."
"That statue would be quieter than ya are. I might keep it."
Kael deactivated Stone before Andre became any more pleased with himself. Flexibility returned at once, and he removed the Rune without bothering with another test of the same rune agian.
The coat could withstand more physical force while Stone remained active, but Kael already possessed a better way to gain that benefit. His gauntlets allowed him to reinforce specific parts of his body without sacrificing movement everywhere else. Turning his entire coat into something halfway between armor and a statue defeated the purpose of wearing flexible equipment.
Heft was dismissed almost as quickly. Kael did not need his coat growing heavier while he was trying to punch something, particularly when the reinforcement covered enough of his body to interfere with his footwork.
Second Wind produced no meaningful interaction with the armor. Exploit Weakness required direct contact with a target and was already far better positioned on his gauntlet. Execrate suffered from the same limitation, while Excise was even less useful because the coat had no practical method of applying its effect.
Technically, Kael could activate one of them and throw his entire body into an opponent. He spent several seconds imagining himself sprinting across a battlefield to strike someone with a Heft-enhanced shoulder.
Then he shook his head. "No. That would be incredibly stupid."
Andre looked over with one eyebrow raised. "What terrible idea did ya just reject?"
"Nothing worth explaining."
"That worries me more than if ya had decided to try it."
Momentum was technically compatible, but its placement made the combination impractical. The coat’s socket rested high on Kael’s back, almost at the base of his neck, and Momentum required precise activation. Touch, acceleration and release all needed to happen at exactly the right instant.
Reaching behind his own neck while sprinting at a speed he was still learning to control sounded like an excellent way to smash his face through a wall not to mention even his hand will be accelerated so he might knock himself out if he tried to slap the rune shut. Kael returned Momentum to his belt without testing it.
The hours passed, followed by several days. Kael continued working through his collection, although he became considerably more cautious after Frost nearly broke the mesh and Fire came close to cooking the leather.
Every Rune received a short trial. He documented how the energy entered the weave, which sections reacted first and where instability began to accumulate. Andre laughed at several of the results, but none of the combinations produced anything useful enough to justify occupying the socket.
Eventually, Kael found himself sitting at the table with the remaining Runes spread before him. Only one serious possibility remained, and it happened to be the Rune he used least often.
The Epic Darkness Rune rested between his fingers while he studied its black surface. Kael had gotten considerable value from Darkness in the past, but it had never become part of his usual combat rotation.
Its effect through the gauntlet was destructive in a strange and expensive way. Matter struck by its power temporarily lost cohesion, almost as though Darkness erased its solidity before allowing the affected material to restore itself.
The ability was useful under the correct circumstances, but those circumstances rarely appeared. It consumed too much energy for casual use and posed enough danger that Kael could not experiment with it carelessly.
As he turned the Rune between his fingers, his attention shifted toward the Black Basilisk leather covering most of the coat. The connection had been sitting in front of him since the equipment was made.
The Darkness Rune had come from a Dark Basilisk.
Kael slowly looked toward Andre. "Have you noticed that this is the only Rune here that came from the same kind of creature as the coat’s leather?"
Andre stopped working and examined the Rune before looking toward the coat. "I noticed that ya were running out of things to break. This is more interesting."
"That sounded dangerously close to agreement."
"It wasn’t. I’m simply curious enough to watch from over here."
Kael stood and inserted Darkness into the socket.
The mechanism closed with a soft click, but nothing followed. No energy entered the weave. The leather did not change, and the Malachor remained completely dormant.
Kael waited long enough for Andre to start looking smug, then fed a controlled stream of internal energy into the Rune.
Darkness awakened.
The leather changed first. It had already been black, but its surface deepened into something that no longer resembled an ordinary color. The forge light stopped reflecting from it, and the edges of the coat blurred as shadows gathered across every panel.
The Malachor mesh changed with it.
Kael could still sense each wire beneath the leather, yet the metal no longer pulled upon his shoulders. The weight he had grown accustomed to disappeared as the lower edges of the coat lifted without any wind to carry them.
Sections of dark fabric dissolved into trails of shadow, drifted around his legs and gathered into solid shapes again. When Kael lifted one arm, the sleeve followed the movement without the slightest drag.
"What the fuck..."
Andre lowered the tool in his hand and released a quiet whistle.
Kael examined himself beneath the forge light. He could still feel the coat resting across his shoulders, but its shape had become almost ethereal, as though Darkness had taken the idea of his armor and replaced the physical object with its shadow.
He pressed one hand against his chest. His fingers encountered resistance, slipped slightly into the dark surface and met solidity again beneath it.
Kael studied his hand before turning toward Andre. "Did you know this would happen?"
"No. I hoped the shared origin might improve compatibility, but I wasn’t expecting the entire coat to change."
"Good. It would’ve been annoying if you figured it out before me."
Andre ignored the comment and stepped closer to examine the blurred edges of the armor. Kael moved around the workshop while the dwarf watched, twisting at the waist and changing direction several times.
The shadowed coat followed every movement perfectly. No weight gathered around Kael’s shoulders, and the thick mesh no longer dragged behind him. Even the long lower section clung closely enough to his legs that it did not interfere with his footwork.
More importantly, the Malachor remained stable. Energy moved through the entire weave without overheating the leather, freezing the edges or forcing different sections to fight one another. The thick wires that had rejected nearly every other Rune accepted Darkness as though it had always belonged inside them.
Andre ran his eyes along one indistinct sleeve. "Looks like ya finally found something the weave wants. Whatever Darkness is doing, the Malachor isn’t resisting it."
Kael smiled as a system notification appeared. "Finally. I was beginning to think the socket existed purely to insult me."
[Compatible Rune Integration detected.]
[Darkness Rune has achieved exceptional synchronization with Malachor-Weave Basilisk Coat.]
[Item Property generated.]
Kael opened the updated description and found a new property beneath the previous entries.
[Merge with Darkness]