Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

Kori whistled.

It was a single low note that did not mean anything in particular, almost like a relieved sound he made without wanting to. She leaned her weight on the spoon and limped through the hallway in slow, even steps, the wide wooden bowl thudding softly against the floorboards with each transfer of her weight. Raizen quietly followed a half-step behind, staring agressively at the floor.

Kori pushed her bedroom door open with her hip, almost losing her balance in the process.

The armour was still on the floor.

Hikari had not had the time, or the composure, to put it back. The pieces lay scattered across the rug at the foot of the bed - the chest plate facing up with its pearl finish catching the morning light shining through the window, the waist guard a meter away, the high collar on its side near the wardrobe, the smaller articulated plates of the skirted section spread between them in the rough shape of where Hikari had been standing before she fell. The whole arrangement looked less like discarded armour and more like a strange, abstract sculpture.

Kori stopped in the doorway.

"Oh my - that's - wow."

Raizen peeked over her shoulder.

Without saying another word, Kori handed him the spoon. He took it without thinking; she steadied herself on the door frame with her good hand and lowered herself down to the rug, as slow as she could – her hip was not going to forgive a faster motion. Her knee found the floor first, the bandaged hand stayed in her lap. The good one reached out and lifted the chest plate from the rug, gripping with barely enough force not to lean forward. The piece was heavy, despite its pretty appearance.

She brushed the inside of the plate with her thumb.

"Gah," she said quietly. "I remember how tight and uncomfortable this was."

"How old were you when you had this?"

She thought about it.

"Eh - dunno. Maybe nineteen. Twenty."

Raizen did the math.

"...You said you became a Phalanx at eighteen."

"Mm."

"And you'd been fighting before that."

"Of course. Started taking Nyxes on around your age. Though I was, you know - significantly more talented than you. And not jumping into danger like there was no tomorrow."

"Stop. Mentioning. That."

"Hmm. No, I don't think I will stop."

She set the chest plate carefully on her lap and reached for the waist guard. The two pieces fit together perfectly at the seam, and Kori - who had spent the morning being either distant or in pain - sat on the rug with her old set of armour, assembling it in her hands slowly. She looked, for a few seconds, like a different version of herself. Younger. Looser, maybe. The corners of her mouth pulled upward in something close to a small, nostalgic smile.

"What did you fight Nyxes with, then? Before you got this."

"Sets we were issued from the Vanguard Corps, Obviously"

"Right."

"Don't picture it the way you wear yours, Raizen. Times were different. We had almost no resources, almost no food, almost no anything. Armour is a generous word for what they gave us. It was mostly a back plate. Maybe a bit of hip protection here and there."

"Still - better than nothing, I guess…"

She made a small dismissive sound.

"I don't think you appreciate what I'm telling you, dear. The plates were made from an alloy so light I could bend them with my bare hands."

"...You can bend a lot of things with your bare hands. I don't trust your measurement system."

"You could bend them with your bare hands."

"Ok, that isn't reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be. Also, this one – was a special gift. That's why it wasn't exactly tailored to my precise size."

She slid a smaller articulated plate from the rug and clicked it into the side of the waist guard. The pieces were settling into a half-finished torso shape on her lap, the white pearl finish catching the light from her window and washing the room in a soft cool glow.

"I wore the gambeson they gave us," she said. "The padded undercoat, y'know? That part was decent enough."

"Don't tell me you went into the field with no armour."

"Heavens, no. It was too dangerous even for a wonder child like myself."

"Kori -"

"The metal plates - I started cutting them apart pretty fast, then I used to reshape them, folding them into smaller pieces I could actually move in. The standard issue covered the wrong parts of my body and left the right ones exposed. So I just... Made my own, I guess… From the scrap. Discardable plates I could fit under my shirt. Small ones. Things that looked like nothing from the outside but covered exactly what needed covering."

She leaned slightly closer.

"Most of them didn't know," she added, her voice dropping into something half-conspiratorial. "I wore my little special plates under my clothes for years. Everyone in the unit was convinced I was running around unarmoured. You should have seen their faces every time I came back from a Nyx fight without a scratch on me, ha-ha!"

"That's not funny."

"Trust me, it really was."

"Kori, that's - you were nineteen."

"I was eighteen, actually, when the under-clothes plates started. Nineteen was when they finally gave me a proper set." She gestured down at the half-assembled white armour in her lap. "Not this one, I told you this was a gift – but I used to wear this one instead of whatever they wanted to make me wear..."

"This is your first real set."

"My first real set. Not really built to fit me, but obviously still really good. After they figured out I'd been ignoring their issued stuff for a year and not dying about it. I would have preffered my own little plates, but they eventually found out and said it was wayy too dangerous."

Kori clicked her tongue. "Heh… As if they know anything about combat."

Raizen sat down on the foot of the bed. He was staring at the white plates with a slightly different expression than he had been wearing a minute ago. The armour suddenly looked older, in a way that had nothing to do with its visible condition - the pearl finish was still pristine, the alloy untouched by oxidation, the leather strapping supple. The age was in what it represented. A teenage Phalanx, the same age as him, finally being gifted the first proper armour the city had ever bothered to fit to her body.

"I don't love armour," Kori said, more quietly now. "I never have… It restricts, and I can't move the way I need to move with it on. Even this set -" she rested her hand on the chest plate, "I only wore a few times. Mostly for ceremonies, state occasions, where the officals could actually see me. Times when a Phalanx had to look like a Phalanx."

"...You kept it, though."

"I kept it, yes. But when I had to go in actual battle, I just abandoned on a chair and went without it."

A pause.

Then a small cheeky grin pulled at the corner of her mouth.

"Hold up, Raizen. Hold this spoon."

He looked at her.

She was already shifting on the rug, gathering the pieces toward her with the slow careful motion of a woman with one functional hand. She braced on the bed and pulled herself up onto the edge of the mattress, dragged the chest plate up after her, and began arranging the components in her lap in the order she clearly remembered putting them on.

"Kori," he said. "What are you doing."

"You said you don't have any work clothes."

"Kori -"

"And I said I wasn't going to put you to work."

"Kori. What are you doing."

She lifted the chest plate against her body, testing the angle.

"My hip is busted. My hand is busted. My shoulder is bruised in three places. I'm leaning on a spoon. A giant spoon, Raizen."

"It's a very good spoon."

"It's an excellent spoon. But it's not enough for the day I have planned. And this -" she tapped the chest plate against her sternum, the white alloy ringing softly, "is going to do exactly what I need it to do."

"...Which is what."

"Hold me upright."

Raizen groaned, trying to imagine what came next.

"The armour locks my hips in a fixed position. It supports my spine. It immobilises the parts of me that don't want to be moved right now, and it gives me a structural frame to operate inside of. My old set of armour, Raizen, is about to become the most reasonable medical decision I have made this week."

"You're going to wear ceremonial armour as a brace."

"I'm going to wear ceremonial armour as a brace, yes… If I still somehow fit inside it."

She tested the strap of the chest plate against her shoulder. The piece settled into place along her sternum with a small soft click that suggested the fit was, after all these years, still good.

"Now hold the spoon," she said. "And don't tell Hikari any of this. The poor girl has had enough armour-related trauma for one morning."