Elvira had been watching Grark for a while, she had to admit the hat like carrier thing was adorable, but there was something off. The same feeling that made her slap googly eyes on everything (the cart Grark towed already had them of course,) was screaming at her that there was something wrong. It seemed Grark was uncomfortable with things on his right side. She really couldn’t help but ask Alyvyn about it.

“What’s going on with his right eye?”

“Oh you noticed that? As you can see the skull that side took more damage, I had to use mana repair to replace it, but that isn’t as good. He doesn’t like that much, seems to think he’ll get snuck up on by things he calls hissylizards. Apparently they used to hunt in packs, but while tiny were dangerous.”

“hmmm seems we may have to have a word with Mandy, and a blacksmith, I have an idea, and yes it’s ridiculous but it might work.”

“Do tell?”

Elvira leaned over and whispered her plan to Alyvyn, after all it wouldn’t do to spoil the surprise.”

The metal bit of this task was easy, the local blacksmith had a forge big enough tp produce three metal hoops that clipped together, and a proper anchor. The tricky bit was to come after that. They approached Mandy quietly and once things had settled down a little requested her assistance.

“Hmm this won’t be easy you know? Once it’s fitted I’ll need to tweak the lens until it does the job, while at the same time making sure it doesn’t catch the sun and set fire to stuff. That’s gonna be tricky with something on that scale.”

“Question is can you do it?”

“Of course I can do it, what do you take me for, a rookie? Just saying it’s a hell of a task”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Well the sooner we get started the sooner we’re done.”

************************************************************************

The blacksmith lit up his forge, he still couldn’t believe this ridiculous job, or the pay. But the extra cash would really help around here, and there was a debt that The Princesses showed no intention of collecting on. But that just made Jack (who funnily enough was surnamed Smith, though he usually went by his middle name, Macadam, or Mac for short,) more determined to really show his best work, he owed them at least that much. It wasn’t easy to run a forge without much water after all, and oil quenching all of his work (yes even the cheap stuff) had been on the verge of sending him to the poorhouse when they had arrived. So the die was cast, then when he noticed several flaws, remade, recast, and the stubborn bits painstakingly buffed smooth with his best files. Then when the three hoops were made a fixing latch for embedding in stone was added, alongside two catches at the sides and a set of hinges taken from a porthole window because they were the only thing big enough.

The town steeplejacks were next up, this was a new experience, the things they were used to scaling didn’t normally bend down to make the job easier. Then again they didn’t normally sneeze, or twitch (how the hell a creature that was made of stone and scale twitched was impossible for them to fathom, but somehow Grark managed it.) Nor have usually teeth bigger than the biggest guy on the work crew, still this was definitely a tale to brag about over drinks for years to come. It wasn’t every day you got to fit accessories to the face of a massive bloody rock dragon after all, and they knew strangers would be buying them rounds to hear this particular tale for years to come. Which was almost worth the scariness of working a couple of feet from the burny bits of a dragon (who by the way squirmed like a toddler on the day of their first hair cut, but other than the fidgeting was incredibly well behaved and patient. Usually rock drills and faces were not things that coexisted very well, but according to the other construct who was apparently talking to him the reason he was fidgeting so much was that the fitting tickled.)

Mandy meanwhile was working her butt off. It quickly became apparent that a straight concave lens was a really bad idea when the sun caught it and the grass underneath started to smoulder. She needed a way to keep the lens size while limiting the wide concave bit to as small an area as possible. She couldn’t compound it, that would defeat the object of the lens. So that was out, fitting extra covers over a large chunk of the surface area would look totally wrong too. But she needed some way to narrow the lens effect to only over the eye (which was not as easy as it sounded especially when the eye in question was as big as a manhole cover.) In the end while she was thinking about how fancy it was going to look the solution hit her. She could take the fancy look and use it. She started tinting several fancy glass shapes while keeping them transparent, mostly scrolls and curls, and placed them around the excess lens area, then added a subtle tint to the main lens. Not enough to interfere with the effect, just enough to break up the area that could be an accidental fire starter. According to the reports Grark lived in an area that got excellent sun (kind of a requirement for the formation of solar crystals, which started on the surface then as exposed to more light grew a massive underground system of crystalline roots like some kind of mycelium system,) So at least the tint would be useful on the more delicate eye, and at last the lens was ready to go.

The steeplejacks carefully lifted the new lens into place. Making sure to fasten it securely into the frame, as the assembled gawkers watched. On a positive note Grark really suited the monocle.