by P. S. Power
The rest of him knew that it meant she was one of the enemy, however. There to do horrible things to the world, for some senseless and unknown reason. What that was, in particular, Dareg hadn’t worked out yet, but the enemy that he’d encountered had simply fought to the death each time so far, making it a bit hard to actually have a reasoned conversation with them.
“Well…” He gasped as he spoke to himself, hoping that no one heard him as he padded to the front of the port. “You didn’t exactly try to hold a conversation with that last one.”
It was the truth. He’d murdered the man, or at least helped get that done. Then he and Lynd had escaped from the Forten world ship they were on, since those people actually had laws about simply executing people like that. Even if it was needed at the time. Which, while done by different rules than he would have run things himself, given the situation, made sense. You couldn’t have everyone just running around taking out whoever they decided to claim was the enemy after all.
It meant that, eventually, he was going to have to answer for that. Probably serving the rest of his days on a Forten work gang. After he helped to stop the enemy. Honor might demand he be brought to their justice, and it was fair enough, but there had to be allowances for them being at war. Otherwise they were going to lose and be a hindrance to the rest of them. You couldn’t arrest a warrior every time he fought a battle after all.
Not and prevail.
Tam-Unit had a tan wicker basket for him when he padded over to her. It was large and heavy enough to be interesting, and a new glass of water, which he drained before leaving.
“Bye Tam-Unit! I should be back later in the day? Oh… Duh. I need to take some things with me. I swear I’d forget my head…” He ran then, loading a small case with his new devices so they could test them later. The little box was made of magic, but instead of letting it float around like it wanted too, he took the hand sized thing, and stuck it in the basket with what turned out to be strange metal jars, in the wicker looking covered lunch container. There were ten of them, but he noticed that they had a small lever on the top, which should allow him to open them. It was clever, actually.
Tam-Unit provided some basic hemp strings for him, when he asked, and then, as soon as he could, Dare used his jump shield to rise straight up into the air, move over to the far coast in an instant, and then settle from space over the city of Printer. It was full daylight already there, and people were already working at their morning exercises when he got to the low walled weapons square. The focus stone thing had been put there to protect passersby from being hit too easily by flying weapons, if a mistake were made. It wasn’t total protection, since if you were a student there, you were supposed to be smart enough to learn how to at least stay back far enough from dangerous things.
If a few had to lose an eye, or be cut by flying Debri to do that, then it was simply the cost of education.
Petra Ward looked at him closely as he landed. Staring for a long while, at least as far as Dareg could tell. It was probably just a glance, to be honest. A fleeting thing, and not the glaring and unflinching gaze of someone plotting his death for missing her classes.
She’d been working with someone else, a boy that was smaller than most there, named Kolt, Dare thought. He was a rather avid fighter, if in his first year. Given that Dareg wasn’t even a real student there, that probably meant the kid outranked him horribly, so he darted to the side. It was important to seem like he wanted to be there, so he settled his basket of goodies behind the table that all the shields and other gear were placed on for the students to use. There really wasn’t that much on the surface, to be honest. Just for the decoration of the thing he liberated his little metal looking box and placed it there as well, so that someone would ask a question about it later. That way he wouldn’t look quite as much like he’d come ready to brag about his new things.
Given he didn’t really know if they’d work right or not, that was the last thing he wanted to seem like he was doing.
Petra slowly stalked over to him, meaning that he needed to head over in her direction, if it wasn’t going to take all day to happen. Meandering to his own perspective, he examined her carefully, and picked up that she was probably planning to be a bit surly with him. The rule was that if you missed a day, you were supposed to come in on your off days to make up for it. Two to one. In the last five days two of them had been off for the students, which meant he’d owe six already.
It might be fair for him to argue that his new changes had made things too hard for him, or that not being a real student made him exempt from such things, but the truth was that he needed to make a point of doing any kind of fighting work he could, from then on. Even if it was all in extra-slow motion.
“Sorry I missed for a bit. The changes Timon made to me are kind of… Honestly, I couldn’t track what was going on all the time before. I was losing focus in the middle of active work. I think I can do it now? I’ve been working on some meditation skills, so that might help.” He spoke first, and measured his words, trying to seem pleasant, so that she might not yell at him as loudly.
Rather than raise her voice, she moved in and gave him a hug. To him it seemed a lingering thing, one that lasted long enough to be interesting to him, but she wasn’t rubbing herself all over him, and was pounding his back, so even there with the fighting students around it wouldn’t seem that out of place.
“Dareg! Tor got in touch with me and explained it all. Are you all right to be here? I know that things must have hit you hard…” The words sounded right, but didn’t track with her mouth at all, so he looked her right in the eye, breaking away occasionally. To him if felt like he was staring lovingly into her eyes, but it probably seemed shifty and darting to her.
“Yeah. I can do this. Stones and pells? I already ran. Twelve miles. Speed wise…” He shrugged, and doing it at the right conversational pace. It felt oddly slow, but it had to be done to a pace that others could handle. At least if he wanted to be able to be around others any longer.
Petra smiled then, and moved back, but patted his arm.
“Go to. Then, after that, why not work with Havar? That way if you accidently hurt anyone, they won’t run away screaming about the constant abuse here.” She seemed to find that one funny, for some reason. Probably because of the constant abuse she doled out to everyone. It was true enough. They were trained without gentleness. Probably at a level that would seem extreme to most professional fighters even.
The stones started pretty small, and the idea was to do a series of exercises, lifting them all, for several repetitions of each movement. Starting at the light end, so that if you weren’t strong enough for the massive things on the heavy side, you still got a good workout in. It was different for him now, Dare noticed. Really the whole thing felt a lot easier, so after the first two sets, starting with both hands on the metal handle of first a ten, then twenty-pound rock, he doubled everything.
From that point on it seemed to be a lot like it had been before for him. His muscles still burned, but he didn’t have to stop at any point. It was only pain, after all, so that part was the same. When he got to the heaviest stone, a thing that was three feet high, and nearly that big around, he lifted it fifteen times. That was more than he used to do that way. Before he was good for about three on it. It probably weighed close to seven hundred pounds, he thought. Not that he really knew.
It was just there to remind people that they always had to keep trying. Most of them couldn’t make it move at all. Him doing it always caused at least a few to glance over at him with envy.
Then he moved to the pells, which were just smooth, barkless logs standing upright in the ground. Baron Havar, who was taller than Dare by nearly a foot, was using a blunted and heavy blade to tear splinters out of the one he was working at already.
That was the goal, of course. There was a stack of the things behind the outer wall, and after a thousand blows or more of each type, they could move into the real practice. Petr
a hadn’t told him what to do that way, so he just worked, slamming into the fresh log in front of him, which resisted his efforts valiantly. He’d sort of been hoping that he’d splinter the thing in two in a few minutes, showing his new powers, but it held out against him nearly as well as it was against the powerfully built Baron next to him.
When the other man stopped, he turned and smiled.
“Dareg. How are things?” There was real sympathy in the words, which was a bit surprising. It probably meant that both this man, and Aunt Petra, had been told about his mother.
Finding out that you might be part Adversary, whatever that meant for him, was hard, and they likely understood that. He was a bit baffled that they weren’t trying to kill him over it, to be truthful. No one had so much as suggested they do that yet, except for him. After all, it was just possible that his very nature was designed as a trap of some sort, to harm people, or even kill them all.
“Survivable. I was thinking we could work blades today? Live steel? I have a new kind of shield that I’d like to try out. Armor, really. You’ll see.” He didn’t wait for the man to say yes, or no, just sauntering as slowly as possible over to the magics table, the other man moving with him the whole time.
At the box, he realized that he needed to get some of the twine out, given that the armor would need to be worn around the neck. The material would seal over it there, holding it in place as part of the structure. There was a kind of cup built into the neck for things like that. If you had magic in your pocket, the stone would be covered, and not accessible until the armor was turned off. On the good side, he’d remembered not to let things with magical fields on them be eaten away when the armor came into being. Instead you might be a little lumpy in places, depending on what you had with you.
It was tempting to throw himself into things then, but he held his speed, perfectly, and explained while he got the new gear ready. Dareg even tried to sound relaxed and sort of happy. No one wanted to be around a rushed and stressed seeming grump, after all.
“This will, if it works, make a very strong physical armor appear on your body. If you have regular clothing on and use this, it will strip you bare, turning that into part of the protections. If you have magical things on, amulets and so on, it will try to cover them, but anything else you’ll lose. If you start nude it will grab material from outside of your body first, from the ground or surroundings, to about five feet out. Including anyone standing too near you, who isn’t wearing a shield. It will build everything with a regular shield on, as well.” That part was hard to explain, but instead of making him repeat it all, the larger man put a hand out.
“I see! I think. So I just put this on and tap it into play?”
Nodding, Dare got one of the space worthy shields from the table as well. Then handed both over.
“Try it with this one turned on, first? That’s the part that might not work too well.” If it didn’t then whatever the fellow had in his intestines would be used first, then his hair, to build the protections. If that wasn’t available, then the whole thing would just stay off. You wouldn’t get the armor, but it wasn’t going to strip your skin or bones to protect you, which would be as bad as a beating, since both might well kill you.
The effect was nearly instant, and interesting to watch. More so than he would have figured, to be honest. The Baron started fully dressed, but as soon as he tapped at his neck, a gray haze surrounded him, the world rushing inward through his shield with a pop, leaving him fully dressed in rather fine looking black armor. It was a bit shiny, like a beetle’s carapace. Smooth and organic looking as well, rather than seeming like it was made of metal.
The man flexed and moved around a bit, but didn’t complain about it being too stiff or tight.
“Not bad. Through the other shield as well. So, what’s next?”
That was, of course, having the man take it off, and then stand there, without a regular shield, nude, since his clothing amulet had been turned off, as everyone watched him. If he had an issue with being cold, he didn’t complain about it. Then Dare got a knife from the weapons rack, and tried to stab him in the middle.
The effect was incredible, and exactly what he’d been going for. Painful, too. The entire blade, and about half of his hand vanished, being turned into armor for the other man. The effect was what he’d planned, but Petra ran over, her eyes wide.
“Your hand!” She started to scramble for a healing amulet as Kolt watched him, his eyes wide, and Dareg tried not to scream. That meant clamping his jaw hard, gasping. He grabbed at his own wrist, to stop the bleeding. Clamping down with more force than he would have figured would be needed to make it work.
Eventually he managed to speak, through clenched teeth, and even smiled. It was fake, but he was already injured, so moaning about it wouldn’t help anything.
“It’s what the armor will do. That way, if you get attacked, its forming will help you fight. Taking the weapons around first, if it can. It isn’t really smart or anything, so that’s a pretty rough effect. I should heal from this in a few minutes.” He was in fact already doing that, as he stood there. It wasn’t as quick as a magical amulet being used, but was close enough that Petra didn’t hand the thing from the table, with its glowing green shadow image of a common looking man, over to him.
Instead she just stood there, while his fingers and skin regrew. It took about ten minutes or so, and Dareg used the time to have a drink from the ten cans that Tam-Unit had given him, so that the effort wouldn’t deplete him too much. He needed water too, after that, since the new drink really did coat his mouth and tongue.
When that was fixed, he got another two blades from the weapons rack, from the far end. Heavy ones that were actually sharp. One went to Havar, the other he kept. Dare didn’t have any armor on himself, though he would after that, he decided. It seemed to work pretty well, after all.
Petra gave him a curious look, then backed off, not bothering to tell him that it wasn’t really fair for him, a man with only a knife, to have to fight with a much better fighter that had on full armor. Havar even had a face plate, and very strong, clear eye coverings. That was how the helm of Alice’s armor worked and this was just a copy of that, really.
It even looked the same, being sleek, black and dangerous seeming.
The other man didn’t need an invitation to fight, and was bloody and ruthless about it all. That part was incredibly hard for Dare to manage, since he tried to match speeds perfectly. It meant he was working in very slow motion, as the other man and he fought. Constantly and without stop, since Havar wasn’t in any danger really. That also meant Dare was being cut as they did it, and healing at the same time, over and over.
Yes, it was clear that his new reaction time was making him better than before, and he had space to think about what he was doing, which really helped a lot, but Havar was simply better than he was. It made a difference, and would have even without the extra protection. Still, as he danced with the man, their blades shining, and bits of his own blood almost hanging in the air, slowly drifting to the ground as they did it, the rest of the fighters in the area stopped what they were doing. Right up until Havar moved back, holding his hands high. One of them still had a knife in it, which meant that Dare was going to be careful about it, even if it looked like a ceasing of the lesson.
There was almost no way that Havar couldn’t fight from that position after all.
His entire body stung horribly, but healed while he took a few steps back himself. The stone under his feet was red and messy already. Not a puddle of his life essence, perhaps, but definitely a healthy amount of blood had been stomped under their feet.
From the side, Petra clapped.
“All right. We need more than one test for the new armor however. Should we use the one Havar has on for that?” That probably seemed sane and normal to her, but Dareg used his whole hand to slowly indicate the small box on the table.
“There should be enough for everyone here and some spare
s. Also some new weapons. We won’t want to test those here. They’re pretty dangerous. I mean, so is the armor, which is the point, but…”
He didn’t know where to go for that part of things, but Kolt smiled at him.
“We have a small weapons range not too far away. About a mile?”
Dare nodded, and waved at the box.
“Anyone going will need to have a real shield on. That should protect us from the new weapons. There’s a reason for that. You should all get the armor. Remember though, if it turns on, if you’re attacked, it will injure whoever did it, so warn your friends first. Someone playing at stabbing you may well lose a hand.” They all needed healing amulets as well, he bet, which Petra didn’t mention to him or anything.
She simply nodded.
“Good point. Everyone got that, right? If some clown in town tries to punch you as a joke, or even in anger, they’ll lose their hand. That means it’s the wearers responsibility to avoid that kind of situation. If you want the magic, you aren’t allowed to go into a tavern, or get drunk, even in private, understood? If you can’t live without drinking, then don’t take one. That’s just asking for problems.”
There was some muttering, but no one opted to forgo the new thing, at least for the day. If they didn’t wear them, then it wouldn’t help if they were attacked, but in truth most of them probably weren’t targets for the Adversaries yet anyway. He kept running into them, but even that seemed nearly to be happenstance, more than anything else. Still, Dare put one on, wearing it around his neck at least.
Kolt was the first one to activate his, his magical clothing vanishing while it happened. He, rather cleverly, had moved to stand on the pile of chips that had been knocked off the pells earlier, rather than eroding the stones under them. There was a shiny and circular dip where Havar had done that both times, already. They weren’t deep, but they were clearly there. Kolt managed to polish the stones as well, but the area, five feet across, didn’t dip in the center really.
