More Training

"I won't do more magic for a few hours. I have to write out what I am thinking first anyway. Of course if we are going to be practicing here I should probably make this for now."

The messenger blinked and took a step back as the mat edge he had been standing on started glowing. Which was good because a second later a word appeared on the inside and a shield ran perfectly along the lines of the mats, taking up about an eighth of the room and going all the way to the ceiling. I had left parts of the shield permissible to air. It had taken less work to raise the shield then I had thought and right now it was keeping itself on as long as it wasn't attacked and probably by something more dangerous then the blast that had almost killed two of my unit, the shield wasn't going to fall. I could take the thing down but it would have to be done from the inside.

I walked over to a wall and sat with my back against it, "Keep going, that shouldn't happen again now." The two men from my unit frowned at me.

The trainer actually spoke, "You are crazy. What are you planning?"

"Be careful, Travis or I will think you are volunteering."

"I have a strong feeling no one in their right mind would volunteer for anything you are thinking of at the moment." He was probably right but if we wanted a chance at not dying in tenish days I had to come up with a good plan.

No stray blasts hit the shield while I waited. The messenger watched from the outside. He was amazingly calm about the separation, but I guess while his other sense might be limited, the shield pasted sight and sound easy enough. When a servant brought the clothes I had asked for the messenger stepped right up to where I could create a door in the shield. I looked at him curiously, "Do you want to start or not?" I didn't change my expression. "It says door, right there." The messenger was pointing to a symbol in the middle of the mat.

"You can read it?"

"Not much, but I have spent a long time practicing."

I raised an eyebrow and opened the door. The messenger stepped through and dropped the leathers. He then turned and stepped back outside the door. That made me nervous. "You are ok waiting out there?"

"You know I was ordered to monitor you."

"And you already discussed it with our lord, and he is the one that pointed out the door." I sighed and closed the door. The messenger seemed happy that I called him on his slight deception. I was then too busy to care about the messenger or much else. I had a plan and it was going to take days, no matter what I did.

We spent most of our time in the shielded part of the training room. My unit was training together which was great they would be a good team. I was busy writing on their armor. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish what I had planned in only seven days but I knew if I left anything off it could be the death of one of my brothers. I asked for bracers the second day and I spent a moment making what was probably the most important part of the armor I had planned. It would also give us more room when the others weren't in the room. Of course the most important thing to me was two proofs of concept.

I called for the unit to break after I finished all three bracers. The messenger was watching me as always, he didn't seem curious about what I was doing but the little shadow that hung with him seemed to be watching curiously. If a shadow could be curious. "You see this?" I showed the bracers to my group. "It will do what that does but on a much smaller scale. It also won't need me to power it. See the gems? They store some energy, just enough to keep the shield from collapsing if anything but a directed energy blast on the magnitude of something only I or our lord can do. If it gets hit enough times physically before it can recharge it will also collapse. I will need you to figure out how many times that is for me. The good news is as long as you can move you can recharge it. The gem collects energy as it is moved, I put limiters on it well below what should be the max the gem can hold, so it should not explode."

"Should not, always what I like to hear in a fight."

"Oh, that isn't even the part I expect you not to like, Travis. These will be able to activate the things I am putting into our armor, but to keep them from being used against us should death decide she wants one of us as her dance partner, I am going to have to put an activator in your skin. That will mean as soon as you put on the bracer and it touches our skin the shield will activate."

"How will we take it off if it turns on right away?"

"Well I have two solutions for that problem. If the first one works your shield will form such that it cannot overlap and it will make holes so that you can manipulate items you are wearing. If that doesn't work, well we will be able to test how much abuse the shield can take before collapse, that much sooner. Yet that is still not the part I thought you would pick up on."

The man who knew me way too well already smiled. "No, you would think the branding would bother us. We fight for a living, how bad can a little scar be anyway?"

"Are you going to volunteer then?"

"Why aren't you doing it to yourself, first?"

"Because I won't be able to blast a shield I am wearing if it doesn't work right the first time."

"Right, and your other reason."

"What makes you think there is another reason?"

The man sighed and looked me square in my eyes, he only does that when he thinks I am being foolish. He will follow me into any fight but he thought I thought too much. "Easy, I know you don't risk your brothers. I have fought with enough times to know that you pick the job most likely to find death on the sand. Why are you passing this off exactly?"

"Bah, you caught me, but I am not letting this go either way. I cannot use the shield myself. It will block my sense, same as the one around us now does."

"Which is why the eyes in the back of your head aren't working, and I thought it was just you hyper focusing on a problem, again. You cannot use the shield but that isn't the only thing you have been working into that armor is it?"

"No, and those I can use."

"Which is why you put those into your armor, but you won't be shielded from blows, like us."

"That is correct."

"Then I will warn you of this only once, sir. If you call a general's sacrifice, like you normally do," he added that in a bitter tone as I opened my mouth. I closed it again and he continued, "I will knock you into next week and we will see how good this armor truly is, is that clear, sir?" I glanced at the two men behind him. They both folded their arms and nodded.

I sighed a bunch of mutineers is what they are. "Fine, but that means you get to go first. Hold your arm and try to keep still."

The big man frowned but held out his arm fist out, knuckles down. I went as quick as I could but the big man was panting on the ground before I was done. Magic was not nice but the marks I needed to complete the spell where there. I handed him the bracer once he got his breath back. We had drawn quite a crowd and he slipped the bracer on. The shield was complete and the magic popped into existence. Well the first part worked. I threw a light force at the shield and it scattered around it. There didn't seem to be any ill effects. The man let his brothers take a few swings at him. It didn't even knock him back. Now was the part that I only hoped worked.

He reached over with his left hand and lifted the bracer from his right. The shield had not stopped the contact and I breathed a sigh of relief. The bracer lifted easily for my brother and the shield disappeared as the spell that it created became incomplete once more.

The other two didn't take as much convincing as I thought it would to get them to agree to let me do the same thing to them. I got the impression that they had all thought the others were over reacting until I had done it to them. I got them to promise to keep the braces on while I worked in the training grounds. So after that day I didn't bother activating our large shield.

The next day the messenger told me the terms changed. I didn't ask him what changed just to let me know if they changed again. I wouldn't have been able to remember the change anyway in the state I was in. I had a project and I was trying to get it done as fast as I could. I spent almost every waking hour working on the armor. My brothers almost shoved food into while I was focused on what I was doing.

I sat back on my heels and my unit came over. Not for the first time I wondered what I looked like as I worked. They had been avoiding while watching to see when I stopped. It was nice to not have to hide what I was doing, I had learned more about my other sense in the last few days then I had learned the whole time I was in the house.

"Are you done then?"

"As done as I will be. After watching you guys test the bracers there are quite a few changes I wish there was time for."

"Even if you did there wouldn't be much time for us to learn how to use them anyway. Show us what you have done, wilder."

"First, Hose, what are the current terms, they have changed twice now, correct?"

"I cannot tell you that. The terms right now are what I told you before, plus that there will be rounds of 29 to 30 fighters no house may enter more then five fighters. The next term is, that as long as the law is met any incapacitated fighters will be turned into collared slaves."

"Damn, I guess you cannot tell me how many rounds there will be?"

"I cannot."

"The law states that it is perfight. Is a round a fight or the whole match?"

The messenger frowned. The matriarch probably cared more about the prestage of killing me then about the collecting collared slaves, incapacitation was also harder then killing. The messenger had already had his hands in his pockets as we talked but he picked up the stone when he decided that my question made sense. "The whole match."

"Hum, can you bring me three gloves?"

"Gloves will make it harder to fight."