Come Together

Chapter 7: Shields and Uniforms

It was...beautiful.

Tom marveled at the shield in front of him, running his fingers over the runes carved by his own precise hands on the outer rim with unhidden glee. He and Howard had truly outdone themselves. The shield was even more awe inspiring as the near-finished product than it had been as a drawing. Silver was a brilliant conductor of magic, as well as a deterrent to many dark creatures. It was also very responsive to runic commends. Within the inner circle of the silver coated steel was the symbol of Loki, the two snakes carved out of a dark green jade. Each snake's visible eye was inset as a gemstone, the upper snake with a sapphire eye and the lower snake with a ruby eye. The gemstones were to act as magical stabilizers, while the jade siphoned the energy to its proper area, like blood vessels. The heart of the shield, however, was still missing, with only a diamond shaped indentation in the middle of the whole thing. Tom turned the shield over, looking at its underside. A silver, ornate bazuband was seemingly welded onto the back of the shield, though no welded areas were visibly present.

"Pretty thing, ain't it?" came the voice of Howard, who was standing behind Tom for quite some time, making the wizard jump in surprise.

"My question from before still stands, how were to able to procure all this material in such a short span of time?" Tom muttered, his voice slightly wavered from the jump he had seconds before.

"I'm a rich, influential man with a multi-million dollar company. There's almost nothing I can't get." Howard replied smugly, "Now, are you ready to put in the final piece? God, this feels like a fantasy novel or something."

The young wizard simply nodded, casted a spell on the ring to bend back the metal holding the object of interest in place and letting the Stone fall into the palm of his hand. With careful hands Tom set it into the center of the shield. Almost immediately the Stone began to glow, before the light began to spread. When the light reached the snakes' heads, their eyes emitted a light as if someone had cast a Lumos behind them. Then the magic finally spread out to the runes, filling them with a dull golden light, the same color as the rune inside the Stone of Cadmus.

"Okay, not gonna lie. That's cool." was all Howard could manage out, his eyes fixated on the shield in awe.

Tom slid the band over his left arm, the metal fitting perfectly over his entire forearm. As the magic from the shield resized the band to fit his arm, Tom couldn't help but feel like the Battle Mages of old, fighting valiantly with wand and shield, armor and cloak. It had once been a dream of his to become such a Mage, and now it felt like it was coming true.

Testing the shield, he found it to be very light, but not ridiculously so. But merely a pretty shield it was not, and Tom had taken the liberty to carve some more...interesting and useful runes onto the rim. The shield was, in essence, a kind of magical focus. Body of metal, with the Stone as the core, and the precious stones as the buffers. The difference was is that the 'spells' cast were onto the shield itself and nothing else, which meant they were more like commands in a simple machine.

He coaxed his magic into it, urging his creation to do his bidding. The rim of the shield began to sharpen and spin, slowly at first but then faster, creating a deadly whirring saw on the edge of the shield. A flex of his wrist slowed it down. Another command was sent through his arm, and the entire thing began to glow. With a quick flick of his wrist a still doppelgänger of himself appeared, but fizzled out after a few seconds. Good, he didn't quite need a long term dummy, just a short term escape. Fingers gripped the edge, detaching the shield effortlessly from the metal arm cover. There, in the center of the ornate armband was another diamond shaped indentation, which is where the two pieces of metal connected. He put the shield back in place with a barely audible click.