send a letter to his parents explaining why he died.
Kolb just laughed as he stood shaking.
“You look cold. Go ahead and run to Lenders and back to warm up, then we'll work stones and unarmed for a while. Don't worry, you have some time to work on your new shield.” The voice held a warm and jovial quality that Tor didn't really associate with the man at all. It wasn't something he could trust then. New things generally weren't, as had been recently pointed out, they needed to be tested first.
Tor ran, and for the second time since he'd come to the school, really considered the idea of just going down the dirt road to the nearest town. It took about an hour to run the distance and back and no one would be following him. After all, this was just part of his daily routine.
The first time he'd considered it had been after he'd foolishly asked a girl if she'd like to attend one of the student parties with him. Everyone else was getting dates, but the girl, one that he hadn't thought totally outside of his social standing and class, had shut him down cold. And loudly. In front of everyone in the dining hall. That had been during the spring of his first year.
The only reason that he hadn't run off then and just gone back home was because of Rolph, who'd told him that things like that happened sometimes. Some girls couldn't see a good thing when it was presented to them. Their loss. That was easy for Rolph to say, rich, good looking and gregarious to boot. Tor hadn't done anything for weeks after that, even avoiding meals so that he wouldn't have to see the girl again. Two weeks later the girl disappeared, pulled back home by her parents for some reason. At least then he'd been able to go to meals in peace. Except for the people talking about him, pointing and staring when he came in the first few times.
After that he'd kind of withdrawn from everyone except his roommate and the instructors. He was there to work and learn. No matter how pretty a girl was being humiliated like that was too much for him to handle, so he didn't give them a chance to make fun of him like that anymore.
Now this...
Well, he considered, as his feet tapped the ground lightly, a steady jog being good enough for the first half of the trip he felt, could he make a shield like that? What kind of magic would it take? Did he know how to make anything that would help?
His mind turned in on itself as he moved, his focus increasing until he didn't notice the strain of running or that he'd sped up a little. What, he asked himself, was the real problem to be addressed?
A cutter was, he knew from experience, a powerful tool. Just look what it had done to that log. But the basic idea was simple enough. The field just organized a region of space on the tiniest level of being. It told all the energy on each side of a sliver thin line to move in opposite directions. If the gap became large enough, meaning a strong field, it separated matter into two pieces. It didn't cut so much as get the object to pull itself apart, name aside. It was simple and elegant, as well as powerful. Not even requiring outside energy to be made to work.
If he could disrupt that field, scramble it or put in conflicting instructions, that should stop any kind of cutter or even explosive magic from working on him directly. Explosives were similar, he thought. He didn't know it for a fact, but it made some sense that if everything tried to move away from a central point it would blow up. As long as the field had enough force behind it.
That left physical blocking, which baffled the hell out of him for a minute. Luckily for him it did, since he found himself halfway into Lenders and still going, have missed his turn around about half a mile back. Oops. He turned and started going the other direction, making a point to take it a little faster, since Kolb would think he just slacked off if he didn't get back at the expected time.
So, physical blocking...
Nothing came to him, so he set
Kolb just laughed as he stood shaking.
“You look cold. Go ahead and run to Lenders and back to warm up, then we'll work stones and unarmed for a while. Don't worry, you have some time to work on your new shield.” The voice held a warm and jovial quality that Tor didn't really associate with the man at all. It wasn't something he could trust then. New things generally weren't, as had been recently pointed out, they needed to be tested first.
Tor ran, and for the second time since he'd come to the school, really considered the idea of just going down the dirt road to the nearest town. It took about an hour to run the distance and back and no one would be following him. After all, this was just part of his daily routine.
The first time he'd considered it had been after he'd foolishly asked a girl if she'd like to attend one of the student parties with him. Everyone else was getting dates, but the girl, one that he hadn't thought totally outside of his social standing and class, had shut him down cold. And loudly. In front of everyone in the dining hall. That had been during the spring of his first year.
The only reason that he hadn't run off then and just gone back home was because of Rolph, who'd told him that things like that happened sometimes. Some girls couldn't see a good thing when it was presented to them. Their loss. That was easy for Rolph to say, rich, good looking and gregarious to boot. Tor hadn't done anything for weeks after that, even avoiding meals so that he wouldn't have to see the girl again. Two weeks later the girl disappeared, pulled back home by her parents for some reason. At least then he'd been able to go to meals in peace. Except for the people talking about him, pointing and staring when he came in the first few times.
After that he'd kind of withdrawn from everyone except his roommate and the instructors. He was there to work and learn. No matter how pretty a girl was being humiliated like that was too much for him to handle, so he didn't give them a chance to make fun of him like that anymore.
Now this...
Well, he considered, as his feet tapped the ground lightly, a steady jog being good enough for the first half of the trip he felt, could he make a shield like that? What kind of magic would it take? Did he know how to make anything that would help?
His mind turned in on itself as he moved, his focus increasing until he didn't notice the strain of running or that he'd sped up a little. What, he asked himself, was the real problem to be addressed?
A cutter was, he knew from experience, a powerful tool. Just look what it had done to that log. But the basic idea was simple enough. The field just organized a region of space on the tiniest level of being. It told all the energy on each side of a sliver thin line to move in opposite directions. If the gap became large enough, meaning a strong field, it separated matter into two pieces. It didn't cut so much as get the object to pull itself apart, name aside. It was simple and elegant, as well as powerful. Not even requiring outside energy to be made to work.
If he could disrupt that field, scramble it or put in conflicting instructions, that should stop any kind of cutter or even explosive magic from working on him directly. Explosives were similar, he thought. He didn't know it for a fact, but it made some sense that if everything tried to move away from a central point it would blow up. As long as the field had enough force behind it.
That left physical blocking, which baffled the hell out of him for a minute. Luckily for him it did, since he found himself halfway into Lenders and still going, have missed his turn around about half a mile back. Oops. He turned and started going the other direction, making a point to take it a little faster, since Kolb would think he just slacked off if he didn't get back at the expected time.
So, physical blocking...
Nothing came to him, so he set
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