The right boot’s frontal plates also bore an etched lightning pattern akin to that upon her cleaver’s flat, belying the difference in internal construction between it and its twin. Zel didn’t have the eye to distinguish what exactly the differences were or what they meant, only that there was noticeably *more* inside the right boot than the left. She wagered it to be arcane circuitry of some sort.

Her feet slipped into these massive armored jackboots just as easily as her legs had slipped into her new pants, and soon she realized why the plates seemed so loosely arranged before. As the magic within them awoke and adjusted them to exactly, precisely fit her as best as conceivably possible, the leather tightened and shrunk around her leg, causing the segmented plates to close in, clicking into place.

Where before there were small gaps to start with, now there were none, and Zelsys felt a pang of relief at the familiar weight in her step.

Sure, going barefoot made her lighter on her feet, but being a tiny bit lighter wasn’t a tenth the advantage that being able to kick people in half was.

The moment she stepped foot out of the bedroom, there was a familiar CLACK followed by mechanical chattering. A grinning Zefaris poked her head out from beyond the fotoapparat, which she had set up on a tripod that Zelsys didn’t know she had.

Her head subtly tilted to the side, the blonde just stared at Zelsys as her grin faded down to a smile and her left eye opened.

“I- Wow. Just wow,” she stuttered out, shaking her head to break out of her haze before she pulled the photo out of its slot and held it up for Zel to see, who had walked over by now. “Even though I was there when you commissioned these… My imagination didn’t do them justice. Kinda wish I had a picture of you in your old outfit for comparison.”

“I still need the new sleeve for that to be a fair comparison, don’t I?” Zel grinned, seeing no reason to conceal her own pure excitement for her new armor sleeve in this private setting. She could already picture its interlocking armor plates and improved recoil dispersion in her mind.

“Yeah, but… Look at that texture! And the fit!” Zef beamed over the craftsmanship of her trousers, running her hands over the leather. This entirely benign action soon turned not so benign, and Zel found herself shedding her snakeskin only moments after she’d donned it.

A breath of change passed.

A missive from the G-Kaisers arrived the next morning.

The armor sleeve would be ready on Tuesday.

Later that Sunday inside the G-Kaisers’ smithy...

“Kinetic dispersion frame... Aether capacitor… Distribution grid… Plate-coating nozzles… Inner harness… Claws… Main plates… I’ve got all the sleeve parts prepped and ready to go. How about the gun?”

“Cleaned it up, remounted the main breach in our new frame, added a bit of flair to the outer shell, tested the recycler vent up to thrice the expected temperatures and essentia pressures, and...”

“...And you stamped your own proof mark and model number where it’ll mount to the frame because you can’t help yourself, I get it. What about the ritual circle, Damaya?”

“It’s ready. I had to pull a trigram chart out of Lingering Smoke and machine out a custom frame to accommodate us using Jade Dragons, but it’s ready. Not so sure about the reactor, though - we’ve already had a few close calls. You sure it’ll be alright?”

“Don’t worry about it. Even if we get a spontaneous manifestation, the automatic shutoff will force it into autophagy before it becomes a risk. Besides, I’d say this one is worth it.”

“It’s true that our best work always comes from spontaneous manifestation incidents, but… I feel cruel reawakening a forge god only to have it kill itself for our works. Sleep is the least it deserves.”

“And yet every manifestation does it of its own will, even if stray spirits sometimes hijack its emissions to manifest themselves. We should count ourselves blessed that our reactor contains the heart of a benevolent forge god, not treat it like a rabid animal.”

“Yes yes, I know, you’ve given us this lecture a thousand times before. It’s just… I understand how these things work, and I know how easily a manifestation can spiral out of control. The vast energetic densities involved mean that even a benevolent deiform can cause untold collateral damage before it inevitably loses cohesion and goes dormant again.”

“Well it’s a good thing you did all that work to ensure a manifestation would be as unlikely as possible to escape the reactor then.”

“Oh sure, I’d be right happy to let you induce a controlled meltdown, if you foot the repair bill.”

“Sure. I’ll source the materials myself for all I care.”

“I hate your guts sometimes. I’ll use what azoth-auric amalgam paste we have left to reinforce the reactor seals. You better not fuck up the trigram alignment.”

“Children, children. Keep the bickering to your free hours. We have an artifact to give life to. Even if something escapes it’ll just beeline for the nearest leyline crossing, and that happens to be so densely warded it’ll just splatter on the barrier.”

“Yeah… How many Jade Dragons are we using again?”

“Eighteen, in three concentric circles of five, six, and seven, moving outward.”

“By the Dead Ones… I don’t think a reactor meltdown is our biggest manifestation risk with this one.”

The Three Smiths toiled long into the night in preparation as the thunderous noise of concert carried over the city

A vaguely humanoid figure of blue fire floated curled up within the G-Kaisers’ forge reactor, slowly growing and becoming more defined as they fed it refined Ignis-rich coal coke combined with solid aether crystals.

An array of glyphs swirled about it, interacting both with the entity and one another in order to maintain a stable reaction and coerce the half-dead sleeping forge god into metabolizing the fuel it was given without taking more of the output for itself than necessary to sustain its current state.