Armure

Armure is a helmet that thinks. When worn, it draws a complete suit from an adjacent dimension and equips its bearer one piece at a time, according to its own judgement.

Conscious objects name themselves at their first breath. Armure chose the plainest possible name; Fleur de Bataille still mocks it for that choice.

Armure belonged to Manatar. It carries Resurrection, a spell found nowhere else, though each casting consumes a resurrection diamond. Antoine de Cerberus used it to raise Alfred Varanov and win Vlad's support for the flight from the Ark. When Antoine vanished, the helmet ended up in a locked chest in Perennus Albion's house.

How It Chose Gyllyn

Perennus prepared Gyllyn for a deadly tournament by making him wait tables unpaid for months. The day before the tournament, he offered only congratulations, then left to greet a woman who had arrived at the house.

A chest called for help. Inside, Armure begged Gyllyn to free it from Perennus. Gyllyn took the helmet as payment for the months he had lost. Armure had waited for a furious young swordsman with no ambition and no price.

Armure carried him to the tournament's semifinal, where Aldor defeated them both. It later took human form as Tristan Longuepée and taught Gyllyn the swordwork of Antoine and his master, whose forms contain no defensive movement.

Armure intends to make Gyllyn king of both the Ark and Cerberus. A man with no ambition, it believes, cannot be bought.

• It brought Gyllyn back from death inside Aldor's shrinking pocket and gave him the full suit where no one could see.
• It restored Frolix twice, once from frozen fragments while preserving his beholder eyes.
• It restored Adraya with the diamond she wore when Gyllyn killed her by accident.
• It silenced Gyllyn's verchoix when Sobiesansky ordered the worm to kill him.
• It closed Gyllyn's mind when Jerax attacked it, though it could not stop her telekinesis.
• It hid him from a dream in which Aldor murdered Mathilde and their family.
• It carried him through Ferothar's fire.

Armure now holds Gyllyn at twenty-five. It intervenes without explanation and has never said how it reached the Ark, who carried it before Antoine, or what it wanted before it chose a king.