Peter of Dwarven Stone (War of Contractia Book 4)

by Tj Dixon

  “We don’t need to tell you that.” Sakura replies haughtily.

  “Does it have as bad a personality as Lucy?” Sor asks.

  “Look who’s talking!” Sakura laughs. She has a point but Sor just ports past us. Why she didn’t port straight to her desk I don’t know. I get the impression she normally ports everywhere.

  Today’s lesson is fire magic and much harder for me. We have to form a firewall, which isn’t too bad, but the tricky part is that we have to make it shift planes in a very precise manner, to allow paper to float through without getting burnt, whilst preventing water from passing through. Paper is of course earth element whilst water is well… water element. That means that the exact planar presence of the firewall needs to very carefully attuned to allow this to happen. Thankfully it is Ash’s element and she helps me get by. I’m still one of the worst students in the class though, with only one in five of my attempts succeeding.

  The afternoon lesson is theory again and just as hard as yesterday. I forgot to ask Asuna for help. Maybe I should ask Rin instead? No, I can’t let myself become awkward with Asuna. I’ll ask Asuna after training today. I’m sure she’ll help me.

  Chapter 22 (Peter)

  As I port in to the training grounds Lilian ports in just in front of me. She looks nervous for some reason.

  “Sorry, Peter.” Lilian says sounding very apologetic.

  “Sorry?” I ask confused and a bit nervous myself now.

  “I completely forgot you wanted to talk last night. I got so caught up in training it just slipped my mind. So I ported back to my room after training and went to bed. I only remembered this morning and you weren’t in the lunch room today, so this is the first time I’ve seen you today.”

  “Oh. Sorry, I forgot too. Tell you what, come to my room at lunch time tomorrow instead. I’m eating there at the moment because it’s a little more private. Bring your lunch whilst you’re at it. We can eat and talk.”

  “Ok. I can’t believe you forgot too though. I’ve been worrying about this all day.” Lilian says with a relieved sigh. “By the way, where is your room?”

  “Oh, I suppose that would help, wouldn’t it. I’ll show you now and you can port there directly tomorrow.” I say and take Lilian’s hand. I then port us outside my door. Lilian looks around and then closes her eyes. When she opens them again she nods and, taking her hand again, I port us back to the training grounds.

  “It looks like everyone else has a partner now.”

  “Then we’ll work together.” I say, which makes Lilian smile.

  “So wind or earth first?” Lilian asks.

  “Let’s start with wind magic. Try attacking me for one minute with wind elemental attacks. I’ll shield.” I tell Lilian and raise my shield.

  “Ready?” Lilian asks and I nod. Lilian strikes with lightning followed by wind slices, followed by more lightning. She keeps up the attacks for the minute before stopping.

  “Not bad. You’ve improved a lot, but you could still improve your wind slices by focusing more on your breathing. By controlling the timing of each breath you get more control over the exact target, allowing you to focus on one precise point in a target’s shield. This will of course increase the chance of overloading or penetrating the shield. Your lightning attacks were good, but you could reduce the delay between attacks by focusing more on the initial elemental attunement and less on the final elemental attunement.”

  “So basically get it right first time so I don’t need to correct the attunement. Easier said than done. Your point about my wind slices should be a lot easier to achieve. I don’t actually want to overpower your shield though.”

  “You can practise on something that doesn’t matter. Your earth magic should allow you to create a suitable target.”

  “Talking about which, let’s see what you can learn. How about you create and strengthen a wall of stone? And then I attack it with lightning?” Lilian suggests and it sounds like a good idea.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll create the target first.” Lilian says and summons a human shaped clay statue.

  “It’s almost too good to destroy.”

  “Then don’t let me destroy it.”

  “I’ll do my best to protect your work of art.” I laugh.

  “Make sure you do.” Lilian grins. “Now your turn.” I summon a wall of stone between Lilian and the statue. Lilian frowns and shakes her head. “That isn’t going to hold even against my first strike. You need to strengthen it by shifting the elemental attunement to include a little of the fire and water elements. You also didn’t pay enough attention to the bonding with the existing land. I could knock that wall over with a strong wind, because it isn’t embedded or moulded into the ground. It’s just sitting on top.”

  “Sorry, I’ll try again.” I tell Lilian and focus on her advice. I make the wall extend further into the ground so it at least shouldn’t fall over. Shifting the elemental attunement after summoning it is probably harder than getting it right in the first place. If it was wind magic it would be no problem, but with earth, water and fire it is much harder for me. At least Lilian only needs to focus on one element, even if it isn’t her best element.

  “That’s better.” Lilian says as I finally get the attunement right. “Now time to blast your wall into a thousand pieces.”

  “Do your best.” I tell her nervously. It took a lot of work to get it right, so I hope I can maintain the wall.

  Against the first wind slice I easily maintain the wall, repairing the minor scratch instantly, but as Lilian throws wind slice after wind slice at more or less the same point it gets harder. As she continues her accuracy improves and after a while every attack hits exactly the same point. Clearly she is following my advice and controlling her breathing. This makes my job harder though, because if I am not careful a small amount of damage is left behind even after I repair the wall, and that damage could quickly build up at the speed Lilian is throwing the attacks.

  “I’m going to run out of power soon if I don’t stop.” Lilian tells me as she halts her attacks. I don’t think I could have maintained the wall much longer, because towards the end Lilian was inflicting damage quicker than I could repair it.

  “Good work. Your attacks were faster and much more accurate.”

  “Thanks. We still have a while before we change, but if I use too much more power now I’m not going to have any for the second half of the training. So what do you want to do?”

  “How about you tell me how you created that statue so well?” I suggest. It really is very realistic.

  “It’s only clay, so it’s easy. Now if you were making it from something like granite or marble, that would be much harder.”

  “I’ll definitely start with clay then. Obviously I could use earth magic to create a statue out of clay, but I don’t have the precision to make it so lifelike.”

  “Well, show me what you can make and I can probably give you a few tips.” Lilian suggests. When she sees my amateur attempt she can’t stop herself from giggling. “Ok, it seems you have a lot of room for improvement.”

  “I know.” I reply glumly looking at the ground. I gasp as I feel Lilian press against my back. Being in Year 1 she is of course taller than me but the softness of her body against the back of my head feels odd. She also feels warm, which is very welcome in this cold weather, but my face must now be bright red.

  “You’ll be making a clay statue just as good as mine by the end of the lesson.” Lilian tells me and I don’t trust my voice, so I just nod.

  In the end my statue is still nowhere near as good as Lilian’s, but it is still an improvement compared to my first attempt. When we swap partners Cherry ports in front of me so quickly, that I wonder if she fears that I may have forgotten our agreement, and paired up with someone else if she hadn’t got to me first.

  “You’re eager.” I laugh.

  “That’s because I’m going to beat your challenge this time.”

  “We’ll s
ee.”

  “So same place as last time?” Cherry asks.

  “Yes.” I nod and she grabs my wrist and ports us beside the same stream as last time. “You can’t start until I say.”

  “Fine.” Cherry agrees with a shrug and a mischievous grin. I can’t help thinking she looks incredibly cute as she does it though. Her features may be typical Contractian features, but there is no denying they are cute. Also the slightly mischievous, though good natured way about her, really makes her stand out from a crowd. When she is alone like this though… “Is something wrong?”

  “No. You can start.” I say absently, but pull myself together enough to jump into the air and dodge her first attack. The second hits my shield, because I’m still not entirely with it, but I recover enough to avoid getting hit again.

  “Two more!” Cherry calls out happily.

  “You’re going to have to work for them!” I call back. As I dodge her attacks I wonder whether it would be such a bad thing to lose and spend the day with Cherry. My pride doesn’t let me lose on purpose though, and I doubt Cherry would want to win like that anyway. So again we dance through the dead trees in a battle of skill. Before we know it Rin is calling to us again and the training is over.

  “Damn it.” Cherry curses, not having hit me again. “Can I try again tomorrow?”

  “Sure. You can try again each day until the end of the week.” I tell her. The truth is that I’ve really enjoyed our training.

  “The rest of the club will be jealous.” Cherry grins.

  “To make it more interesting I think you should have something to lose if you can’t beat me by the end of the week. I’m not sure what, but I’ll think of something.” I tell Cherry. She blinks, but then nods.

  “That seems fair.” Cherry tells me, but she sounds nervous.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not going to be anything too serious.”

  “I hope not!” Cherry laughs.

  “We’ll have to finish fairly early on the last day though, because I’ll need my power to fight Ash the next day. I suppose we can use the first half of the training session.”

  “Who are you taking with you for that fight?” Cherry asks hopefully.

  “I’m fighting alone. That way it’s a fair fight.” I tell Cherry. It also means nobody else has to risk getting hurt.

  “I suppose that’s true, but Ash is dangerous.”

  “So am I.” I tell Cherry and she smiles.

  “Whatever you do, don’t lose.” Cherry tells me fiercely. “But if you change your mind about taking someone, I’d be happy to help you beat that demon summoning scum.”

  “Ash freed her slaves. She was also under a demon’s control, but now she’s been freed. So please don’t talk about her like that.”

  “Anyone who controls demons risks falling under their control. That’s the reason few people are willing to use demons. Ash was a fool for doing so.”

  “She wasn’t the one who summoned the demon that controlled her.” I tell Cherry.

  “Well if you say so. Does that mean Ash is your friend?”

  “I’m not sure I could call her that yet, but I don’t hate her.”

  “But you will do your best to beat her, right? You’re not going to go easy on her just because you feel sorry for her?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll beat Ash.” I tell Cherry confidently.

  “You’d better.” Cherry tells me firmly.

  “I will.”

  “Well goodnight and I look forward to beating you next time.” Cherry tells me.

  “Goodnight Cherry. Sleep well.” I tell her and then she ports away. I then port back to my room.

  “I’m sorry about earlier.” Asuna tells me as soon as I port in. I turn to face her and see she is still in uniform. Hermes is in bed and in her pyjamas already. It takes a moment to realise what Asuna means.

  “Oh, that. Don’t worry. Besides, Hermes laughed more.”

  “I was also thinking again that you should really be using the bigger bed. It isn’t right for a slave to sleep in a huge bed like this, whilst you sleep in such a small one.” Asuna tells me.

  “You think I might not fall out if the bed is bigger?” I joke.

  “That’s not what I meant!” Asuna protests with a blush.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll stick to this bed and hopefully I’ll be fine tonight. I didn’t feel it when I was fighting Cherry, but I really am tired again. I hope I sleep better tonight.”

  “I’m sure you’d sleep better in this bed.” Asuna tells me.

  “I don’t want to hear any more about that.” I say with a yawn. Then I quickly cleanse myself with water magic and fall into bed. Now I just need to avoid falling out again. I close my eyes and say. “Good night Asuna. Goodnight Hermes.”

  “Goodnight Peter.” They both tell me and a couple of minutes later the lights are off. Even with my eyes shut I can tell the difference. It is a welcome relief and now it is dark sleep soon takes me.

  I wake on the cold hard stone floor again. I check with my senses and am grateful that Asuna and Hermes are asleep. The window is visible again just like last night. I climb back into bed tiredly and look at the stars through my blurry vision. They still seem to be looking upwards. I am truly curious now just what it is that has their attention. Even when my vision clears I can’t see anything and my senses are also unable to tell me any more than my eyes can.

  I settle down to sleep again. It feels like I have only just gotten to sleep when Asuna calls out to me. I don’t really hear what she says, so I rub my eyes and shake my head to wake up properly. I then look at Asuna and ask. “Sorry, what was that?”

  “Hermes has already gone to class. I’ve been trying to wake you for a few minutes now.” Asuna tells me, sounding apologetic.

  “Oh… I don’t know why I’m not sleeping properly. Maybe my body just isn’t used to sleeping in a bed again yet.” I tell her and decide not to mention about waking on the floor again.

  “You’d better hurry, or we’ll be late for the morning lesson.” Asuna warns me.

  “Go on ahead. I’ll be there in a moment.” I tell Asuna but she shakes her head.

  “I’ll leave when you do.” She tells me and I don’t feel like arguing. So I get up slowly and then cleanse myself.

  “Ready.” I yawn and then port just outside the class door. Asuna ports beside me a moment later. We then enter the classroom and to my relief the lesson hasn’t started yet, though Professor Schwarz ports in before I have taken my seat.

  “Are you ok?” Ash whispers sounding a little worried.

  “Just tired.” I quietly yawn.

  Today’s lesson is water element. We each have to create fifty identical fish made from water and have them swim in the air in formation, with only water magic. I am pretty good at using water magic precisely for simple tasks such as washing. Creating a school of fish with it is certainly not a simple task, even without making it fly in formation in the air without wind magic.

  Both Ash and I manage to create some fish and we can make them swim in the air in formation, but my limit is about ten and Ash can only use a couple more than me. We aren’t alone however, because most of the class is struggling. Rin and Asuna can manage it and Emma comes close to fifty, but there are only five other students who manage it by the end of the lesson.

  As we queue to pick up our lunch Rin brags about how she managed to use seventy fish at once. Asuna as usual is modest enough to stay quiet, but I counted her fish at one point and she had a hundred. I don’t mention it though, because it makes my ten seem pathetic. I wish Rin would stop rubbing in how well she did.