Mikros Leonidas's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

Maxx still cradled the striped bean against its chest. Then the bean's blue lines flared. The tendrils stiffened and curled toward Maxx's skin. The creature stared at it, tiny head tilting. Mikros stepped back. Something was wrong. Or something was starting. The bean's light spread up Maxx's arm. The orange cracks in the charcoal body brightened. Molten lines ran across its chest and pooled at its feet. Maxx did not fight it. The creature turned its small face to Mikros and made a low, steady rattle. Not fear. A call. "What's it doing?" Cassandra dropped her tools and rushed over. Her half-built armor sat on the bench, plates loose, straps hanging. "That bean is joining with him. I've never read anything like this." Maxx lifted one huge hand. It pointed at the armor. Then it pointed at Mikros. The meaning was plain again, the way it always was. The creature wanted the armor. Mikros looked at Cassandra. She nodded once, fast, and shoved the loose plates into Maxx's open palm. The glow poured off Maxx into the metal. The bean's light and the creature's molten cracks ran together into one bright stream. The half-made armor floated up from Maxx's hand. Plates snapped toward each other in the air. Seams closed with no rivets, no heat, no hammer. The metal drank the glow and turned from dull grey to deep bronze shot with blue veins. Mikros felt heat on his own chest. The armor swung through the air and settled onto him. It clamped shut around his shoulders and ribs. It fit like skin. He had never worn anything that did not chafe or hang loose on his small frame. This gripped every part of him exactly. Then the glow climbed to his face. His clown nose, the red bulb he had worn since the official mocked him, grew warm. It began to shine. Blue light ran through it the way it had run through the bean. Mikros grabbed for it, but it would not come off. It had become part of the armor. Part of him. The light faded. The workshop went quiet. Maxx sank to one knee, its cracks dim now, spent. The bean was gone, taken into the metal. Mikros stood in bronze that shone with faint blue lines, a glowing red nose above his chin. Cassandra circled him. She touched a plate and pulled her hand back. "It's warm. It's alive." She looked at his nose and bit her lip. "They'll still laugh. But that armor will stop a spear." Mikros looked at his hands in the shining gloves. He had wanted armor to make champions respect him. Now he wore the jester's mark burned into it, where every eye in the arena would find it first. He could not remove the nose. He could only walk into the games wearing both, and make them choke on the laugh.