Gauntlet Chapter 1 (Patreon)

** Allowing myself to have a little fun and write this WIP. I need a story to vent my frustration with the world and the assholes on the right. So uh, here it is. Going to aim for a more somber, intense tone with this one.  This story will be taking a back seat to all the others too, if I continue it. Also currently working on another Ryn chapter! Trouble on the other hand is going to have to stay where it is for a long while, since I'm a little burned out on that story.

In other news, I got a new keyboard, my first mechanical one! I got non-clicky quiet and linear switches so I don't annoy my GF with extra loud typing :P. It feels absolutely gorgeous to type on though. The act of typing itself feels wonderful, my goodness.

Sorry for the lack of chapters recently too, I've found myself stuck, as I mentioned previously. Brain just doesn't wanna brain. Anyway.... uh, enjoy these two chapters and I'll get a Ryn one out to you all asap :D. **

Mages are a dying breed these days, but not in the way you’d think. We’ve been hunted through the centuries, our art relegated myth, even among those of us that are left. You see, when those knights came charging into those towers, hedge huts and the like… well they burned the hard earned knowledge of generations. We’re resilient though, we started again… until they burned us as well.

Nowadays, there’s no need for magic, it exists in a different form. Power pulses through copper, light ripples down fibre optic cables. Progress went in a different direction. That’s fine, I guess… except for me, progress hasn’t made it far enough.

I knew I wasn’t meant to be a boy when I was eleven, although I’d sort of figured as much beforehand. When I was thirteen, some fuzz appeared on my top lip, and my mind shattered. I couldn’t stand it, hated every second I stared in that mirror… I snapped.

I never told anyone what I did that night they found me out in the park, rain soaked, crying and shivering. They never thought to check between my legs, where I’d taken a heavy pipe to the festering organs there.

My parents were starting to wonder by now though, sixteen years old and still short as can be, no more facial hair and a voice as high as any songbird’s. I loved it though, I’d freed myself from a life of pain. Well, somewhat… turns out my body wasn’t cool with the damage. Some nights, the pain was so bad I’d pass out, then weeks would go by and nothing would happen.

That brings me back to magic… magic… that thing that so many people wistfully what-if about. I had it, and so did my mother. She’d taught me what little she knew, but now I was on my own and up against the clock to figure out a way to fix my situation.

If only the old relics of our family were useful… I gave a sigh and I closed and dropped the heavy tome I’d been reading back onto the wooden table of our underground workshop. Fucking useless ancestors, all they gave a shit about was war, killing and all that crap. I had a sword that could cut through any type of stone, a helmet that allowed the wielder to breathe fire… and not a single ring or amulet that would grow me a pair of ovaries.

“Itias! What are you doing down there!” my mother’s voice called from above, followed by the basement door creaking open.

The old wooden stairs protested loudly as she made her way down them, stopping once she was within sight.

“Those are ancient relics, don’t you go breaking them,” she chided me, although her heart wasn’t in it. Hard to chastise an emotionless husk like me. Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement, a little emo, but still… I had more emotional resilience than she did.

“Sorry mom,” I mumbled, turning my gaze to the cold stone floor.

Her sigh was loud enough that it should have stirred dust off the shelves. “Come on up and help me prepare dinner. You’re not going to discover any ancient secrets from these dusty scrolls and tarnished lumps of metal.”

“I know, you and grandpa already tried,” I grumbled, nevertheless pushing off the stool. My feet hit the grind with a light whump, and I padded quietly over to the bottom of the stairs with the weight of another night’s defeat burdening my slim shoulders.

Following mom through our obscenely mediocre middle class suburban house, I resolved to go back down after dinner, when my parents were in bed and watching netflix. They wouldn’t hear me if I didn’t drop things so loud.

“More protests downtown,” Dad commented when we entered the combined kitchen and living area.

“As there should be,” mom frowned, giving both him and the TV a glare. I really hoped they didn’t get into another argument over the protests, it always got so awkward.

To my dismay, dad turned the volume up, blasting the opinions of moronic talking heads throughout the room. Great, apparently they were actually rioters down there. You could tell by the neatly stacked piles of bricks at every street corner. That’s sarcasm, by the way... god, people like my dad were so fucking stupid.

“They’re just hurting their cause with their violence,” dad said with a deceptively neutral tone.

Mom just rolled her eyes and began to give orders. Chop the carrots, no, not that thin. Not that wide either, now peel the potatoes. Blah blah blah. I didn’t mind doing chores, but being constantly nitpicked while I did them was another matter.

As we got dinner ready, then ate it, I kept an eye on the TV. The black lives matter protests were getting more and more brutal now, far right militia whack jobs turning up to stir the pot, police working with them. It was a fucking mess. To make matters worse, I knew my friends were there somewhere, but I wasn’t allowed to go. Dad said so.

Thankfully, for my sanity’s sake, mom and dad smoothed things over during dinner, getting back to their loving couple routine like there weren’t any cracks showing. That’s what they did, brushed conflict under the rug where it could go rancid out of sight. Did I sound bitter? Probably, but whatever. I had a right to be, I was a “moody teenager” after all.

I kept an eye on the television though, anxiety rising along with the tensions that were only a mile and a half away. The protestors had set up in a park opposite the city courthouse, but now found themselves surrounded by police and militia on all sides.

Wait… I’d just seen a flash of fiery orange hair. Was that Eva? Yeah, I’d definitely seen my friend in there. Crap, crap…

Mom and dad interrupted my freaking out with their calls of goodnight, and I glanced up from the TV to give them a half hearted wave. Watching them leave sparked a crazy idea, something way, way out there. A way I could maybe… possibly help…

Did I dare, though? No! Now was not the time to doubt myself, I could help, really and truly. All I needed to do was move. So I did, silently as I could for the basement door.

Down I went, rushing right for a chest in the back, hidden behind a row of shelving. The heavy wooden lid of the chest squealed alarmingly when I lifted it, but I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the distant sounds of a TV show playing from up the stairs. My parents had begun their nightly ritual, or as they liked to call it, “us time”.

Pushing aside a whole ton of random relics and other junk, I pulled the items I was looking for out of the box. A pair of chunky metal gauntlets sat in my hands, almost too heavy for my weak arms to hold up.

One was marginally larger than the other, but they were very obviously a pair. Crafted of a dull grey metal, their makers had shaped them in an old style, celtic I think, but sort of bulky. Knots and whorls spun across the hard, brutalist planes that made up their surface, with smaller interlocking plates in the place of leather or mail, where flexibility was required.

Mom had called them useless, their magic lost long ago. Both she and grandpa had tried to bring them to life to no avail. I’d never told them that I’d accidentally gotten them to work last year during the summer. Bored out of my mind, I’d tried them on… and something miraculous had happened.

Without putting them on, I grabbed them and rushed upstairs to my room. I’d need a disguise, but also loose clothing so I could move freely. First was my purple billowy pants, I didn’t know what they were called, but they were cute and I loved them. I never wore them though, I didn’t have the guts to wear cute clothes, so they were perfect for this.

I threw on a pair of black tank tops, two to keep my torso warm in the cold winter air, but tank tops so I could wear the gauntlets properly. Finally, I grabbed a simple black mask I’d needed for halloween one time and a stone grey mages cloak. Yeah, I know… mage in a mages cloak, but I wanted to keep my head covered with the big hood it had.

That done, it was time to leave the house. I raced for the back door, making sure to leave it unlocked as I left, then stopped in the backyard. Time for the moment of truth.

The gauntlets were obviously too big for me, the first and biggest one coming halfway up my right arm, like thigh highs but for arms and made of metal. I had no hope of bending my arm in there, but it didn’t matter, that wouldn’t be a problem in a moment.

Kneeling down, I stood the second, smaller gauntlet up on its fist and then slid my left arm into that one. It too came a few inches from my shoulder. Two massive metal arms on my tiny ones, I probably looked ridiculous.

Only for a moment though, because the exact instant my left hand settled in, they began to change, the fingers shrinking to allow better movement, elbow joint moving on its own. It was like they were suddenly made of melted wax to then be formed and changed by some unseen hand.

The amount of material stayed the same though, making my forearm and hands seem massive and chunky in a way that looked pretty damned cool, if I was totally honest. Adding to that cool factor, and also to the reason I’d specifically worn purple, was the way the celtic knots and runes began to glow with a subtle and eerie dark purple light. Colour coordination!

Flexing them experimentally, I smiled when they moved with gentle ease, as though I wore nothing more than cloth gloves. Time to move… without breaking my leg this time.

Deep breath… crouch… visualise which function I want the gauntlets to perform… and launch.