‘Perhaps we should find someone who can materialize gold or silver,’ said Mehlsanz.
Helen stopped climbing the steps to look at her reaper. ‘Do you know of such a person?’
‘No, but I’m sure they exist.’
She started up the steps again. ‘Yes, well, when you find someone like that, let me know.’
‘Knowing our luck, they probably work for Abolish.’
Chapter Eighty-Four: ‘With thy shroud, endure...’
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As she stared into the mirror, Emiliana tried not to hate what she saw. She hadn’t been confident in her looks even before growing horns in the middle of her face and losing some of the vision in her left eye.
Chergoa and Shenado kept telling her that this mutation ability wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Emiliana did not believe them, frankly. And she wanted to say as much to their faces, too. She wanted to argue and complain and even throw a tantrum like a child. But she never could quite bring herself to. Each time the anger welled up, heating her face and chest with irritation, something in the back of her mind always got in the way. It felt like a pit, dark and endless, and it swallowed her every feeling, good or bad.
She knew what the pit was. There was only one thing it could be. A wound, without a doubt. Still so fresh that hardly anything else even seemed to matter by comparison.
Before leaving the bathroom, she put her mask back on. Essentially, it was just a simple, jet black plate, convexly curved so that it didn’t require an indentation for her nose and bearing two long, flat slits for her eyes. Along with her dark gray hoodie, she’d taken to wearing it wherever she went, sometimes even when sleeping--not that she’d slept much, of late.
The mask certainly attracted its fair share of attention from the attendants around Red Lake Castle, but it was still better than the kind of attention that her horns attracted. It made being seen by strangers bearable again. Already, she’d begun to wonder if she would end up wearing it for the rest of her life.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
Is this a subtle hint that Hector can materialise silver?
ReplyDeleteIsn't oxidised silver black could be mistaken for iron.
ReplyDeletePossibly, but I haven't looked at a wiki page to see its conductive properties, since he could use it as a lightning rod.
ReplyDeleteSilver conducts electricity better than copper but oxidized silver is not as good as pure silver but will still conduct electricity pretty well.
ReplyDeleteYeah but Hector does not have the whole sorry for himself mentality that Emiliana has.
ReplyDeleteTrue. She could learn a lot from him.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure at some point, Garoval said something about "removing impurities" from Hector's metal. That implies that when he forms it, it isn't always perfect. It is entirely possible that since he's young, he fuses the metal with whatever happens to be in the air at the time, which is some combination of various different compounds. I trust I don't need to explain what they are.
ReplyDeleteBut, if the metal IS pure, that severely limits the types of elements it could be, as many true metals, as compared to metaloids, are lustrous, while only a few (including iron and it's family, and weird ones like molybdenum) are a dull grey. We can rule out Ruthenium, it's lusterous, sadly, and Osmium, since he would never be able to lift a sword made of it without a strength boost like he did at school, due to it being about 3x as dense as iron. But that doesn't really help any.
So chances are it's only black because of it reacting and not because black is it's natural color.
ReplyDeleteHector is not making silver. It is quite different from Iron and they would have figured it out by now. Among other things, silver is much softer than iron, not much better than gold. It would a HORRIBLE combat metal, a severe downgrade from iron. They would have figured it out when it bent, dented, or broke when it shouldn't have. And after he solved their financial crisis it would be BAD, not good. You'd be powering Hector down if he was making silver.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in the process of confirming this fact I found a larger chart of metals and their hardness rating (gold, silver, and aluminum share a rating of 2.5-3). Iron is 4.5, obviously much higher. But...I found there is a metal, an element, not a compound, that makes Iron look soft. Tungsten. It could conceivably be confused with iron by people who just didn't know much about metals. Hmm, it's metal, it's heavy, it's hard, it's iron right? But we're talking a hardness rating of 7.5.
Honestly though, I think I would prefer his element did prove iron - a solid start, good combat metal - and achieve the rest by skill, talent, training and guts.
Yeah, well, Hector had hit rock bottom as a human when Garovel offered him a second chance. It was all uphill from there. Emiliana had it all, and all things Servant seemed like giving some of it up.
ReplyDeleteChergoa knows more than Garovel does, from the sound of it. Garovel confessed to not knowing much about it, relatively speaking, while Chergoa said she was a relative expert. She's already in good hands, by great good luck and the grace of Mr. Frost. And see my comment further down about why Hector materializing silver is a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree it would not be good for it to be silver. But we were not saying it was silver it was all conjecture. I was just theorizing on what the metal could be due to it's colour, then since there are not really any black metals apart from iron whether or not the metal could be black due yo it oxidizing as soon as it materialized. tungsten is also the wrong colour even when oxidized.
ReplyDeleteGood thing I'm actually happy with it being iron then. Good base, Hector can take it from there with talent and hard work. I mean, look at his fight with the electromagnetic current guy.
ReplyDeleteStill, it's not like Mr. Frost (I think) to drop something like that 'we're still not sure it's iron' thing and not have something in mind. Which would mean there is almost certainly some kind of complication in there somewhere.
I know, not knowing for definite what his element is is really frustrating. It's probably just iron with a little bit extra thrown in.
ReplyDeleteBut. anything extra is kinda huge. There's not supposed to be a lot of gray area. Either he's doing some other element entirely, or he's doing a metal compound. The list of other elements likely is extremely short if not non-existent, and compounds are so rare I'm not even sure I want him to have one.
ReplyDeleteAn undiscovered element is certainly possible, though possibly even more of a stretch than having a compound.
We don't even know what elements that world has they might have more than earth.
ReplyDeleteOh I dunno about soon. Unless it happens within the thirty or so posts up so far that I haven't read yet. Temperature control is pretty advanced and Hector hasn't even started to try yet. I think we're years away (in-story).
ReplyDeleteI consider that relatively soon compared to how other servants have been practicing 20+ ears hector is still maybe a toddler.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how much we've been given about Emiliana. She seems to share some of the emotional angst that Hector deals with. Maybe they could understand each other enough to make a great team.
ReplyDeleteThe element itself is materialized pure but when it comes into existence it naturally oxidizes. so no compounds being materialized.
ReplyDeleteMOST materialization users can only materialize one kind of element, and ozidised anything is, well, oxidised. Not an element, but a compound. And materializing compounds is RARE. The only people we know of who can materialize compounds are the rainlords, and that's a sort of ancient, hereditary trait.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm trying to say is that, yes, Hector's the protagonist, but making him special in every way would be boring as hell. Flaws and limitations are what makes a protagonist interesting.
I thought Hector's metal was a dark-grey, not actually black. Where was it said it was black?
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for Emy...
ReplyDelete