Chapter 287: It Ends
Arwin studied the materials laid out before him. His back was sore from hunching over an anvil and his jaw hurt from being clenched in concentration. He’d spent the last three hours poring over everything he had to work with, trying to figure out what the best way to make the bracelet for Twelve would be.
He’d tested out every single type of metal that he still had pieces of, quizzing them mentally to run through their desires before eventually settling on Ivorin. While some of the other metals Esmerelda could have gotten him might have been stronger, Ivorin was so happy to be used for anything that it fit his needs perfectly.
The most important aspect for an item like this was ensuring it did exactly what he wanted. There was no room for failure or deviation from the plan.
Unfortunately, choosing the metal turned out to be the easy part.
The real struggle was figuring out what components Arwin would add to it. There were three main things the bracelet absolutely had to accomplish. It had to be functionally impossible to remove, it had to change its wearer’s appearance to a pre-set monster, and it had to change or warp their words to ensure Twelve couldn’t reveal anything during the fight.
There wasn’t a good way for Arwin to predict exactly what to put into the bracelet. He’d never made anything even remotely like this. There were so many separate pieces that had to work perfectly and in conjunction that he was tempted to rip his own hair out.
Every component of an item affected the other ones. The more different desires and magical desires there were within the bracelet, the harder it would be for him to ensure it acted the way he wanted it to.
Arwin held up several pieces of carapace that the Menagerie had collected over their time together. Pieces of spider, chunks of centipede, and a few extras that Rodrick had brought in from dungeon delves that Arwin hadn’t been on.
He set the pieces down beside a pile of wyrm parts — teeth, claws, fangs, bones. And it wasn’t just that. There were parts from dozens of different monsters. If anyone had walked into his smithy, they might have suspected him to be a madman hording trophies of his victims rather than a smith.