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Hector’s time with Lance was decidedly less nerve-wracking, however. Working with metal somehow made things easier, perhaps because Hector felt it was more immediately useful. He couldn’t simply take the armor that he worked on with Lance, of course, but there was something about the process of making it. Ideas arose almost involuntarily.

Even before getting started, he took inspiration from Lance’s gauntlets. Replicating them from scratch was still beyond him, but he realized that he didn’t have to do that. Instead, he ventured to a hardware store and purchased a pair of thin, well-fitting gloves. From there, he created an iron framework for them. Rather than making a simple coating, he began by materializing multiple rings around each finger. Then he filled in the gaps, excepting the joints, and suddenly, all of his fingers were covered with iron, yet he could still move them, just like real gauntlets. Nothing held the metal together, however, so the pieces slid right off when he put his hands to his sides.

And that was the trickiest part. He had to form tiny spikes in each piece, all with corresponding holes, so that they would interlock and stay in place.

Then, it was only a matter of covering the forearms and the backs of his hands with metal. The palms were left bare so that he could still make a proper fist, but at that point, he looked at his work and smiled. He had actual gauntlets. They might not have been as intricate as the ones Lance made, but they were probably more comfortable thanks to the gloves. And they were functional. Mostly. Coating the forearms in iron rendered him unable to remove his hands from the gloves.

He annihilated his work and started over. Garovel told him to use it as a form of practice, to concentrate and see how quickly he could correctly form all the individual pieces. And it was far more difficult when he pressed himself for speed. Interlocking all the pieces was of course the most agonizing part. Even after hours of practice, he was still taking upwards of fifteen minutes to form everything correctly.