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With his flashlight, Hector could see a second pillar of quartz above them, pushing up and clearing the rest of the way to the surface. They popped up in the middle of a street. It was no longer raining, thanks to an apparent hole in the overcast sky, but the pavement was still plenty damp.

Hector pocketed his flashlight and removed the shield from his back, then began materializing fresh iron armor for himself, beginning with the helm--which was something of a relief to be wearing again. He’d been aching for something to hide behind ever since leaving Warrenhold. Decorum aside, he wondered how feasible it would be to just start wearing armor all the time. Considering he could simply dematerialize it whenever it became an inconvenience, maybe...

Hector had to concentrate. He was going for a genuine, complete set of plate armor, this time. It had taken him so long to study and comprehend all of the ins and outs of a full suit, but he was finally there. More or less. He’d occasionally tested his mobility in it during his downtime and patrols around Gray Rock, and it seemed to do well enough, but he had obviously not been able to test it against a true opponent yet. It certainly seemed to scare the hell out of the few criminals who’d seen it, though.

He didn’t take shortcuts with it, either. The temptation was to simply coat himself in iron wherever he didn’t need to worry about his joints or flexibility, but he knew that partial coatings would hang too loosely over his clothes and would not interlock with the other pieces of the armor. So he made sure that his ridged breastplate linked properly to the pauldrons, which linked to the segmented rerebraces, then to the spiked couters, then to the gauntlets--or rather, gauntlet, as he kept his left hand unarmored and also pulled off his glove there. He would need bare skin available on a moment’s notice in order to use Haqq’s shield to its fullest potential.

‘Don’t touch the shield directly until I tell you to,’ Garovel said privately.

‘Okay.’

The neck had been a bit of an issue, but he’d managed to come up with a gorget that allowed him to turn his head, and he’d also perforated the faceguard of his helm for a bit more visibility.