Nodding, he readied himself for what had to come. A hand from the ground or a door opening to the tomb, for him to fall into. Instead the man was just there, not looking dead or decayed even, just smarmy and like he thought he was better than everyone else.
Normal for a Count really.
“Mr. Baker! And how are you doing?” He said, far more politely than Tor would have expected, even in real life.
“Um, hi Count Derring…”
“Oh, do call me Robert. Not really Count any more, am I? Being dead kind of cancels that one out. So, not to rush you, but you're about to wake up to an emergency, thought I'd give a heads up.”
That didn't sound right to Tor at all. Count Derring wouldn't have warned him of anything, would he? It didn't seem likely. He asked why the man had come to the sound of cheery laughter.
“Just to find out why you killed me. That's all. I don't suppose you have a good reason, do you? I never did. “I felt like it” was about the best one I ever managed myself.”
Not wanting to just gloss over it, Tor took a minute to think, it was in dream time, so a lot faster than ordinary thinking.
“It was because you had to die. Really, if you lived, you'd have kept doing those awful things to people, hurting them, raping them, all those other things you did that are too evil to even talk about. I still can't let myself think about most of those things you know. You weren't going to stop, were you?” Was he? Had Tor had him killed the day before his reformation or something?
“Oh gods no. I would have kept going, until I died anyway. Really, from here, I can see you did the right thing. Bit inconvenient, being dead like this, but the worlds better for it. Well, no real time left, you need to wake up now and get to work. Remember, work smarter, not harder.” The man chuckled and waved, a strange and almost silly look on his face.
With that Tor woke and sat up.
What the fudge kind of haunting was that? The man just basically agreed that he needed to be killed? It was true, but even Tor's own subconscious mind should have been harder on him than that. Making sure he knew killing was wrong and not to be taken lightly or something… Was he doing this dream thing wrong? Then again, maybe he just knew that the man had actually been unstoppable in any other way and what he'd done was just right?
By the time he'd scooted out of the bed and got dressed the men came in yelling, it still took a second to understand what they were saying, too many voices echoing in the stone hall they'd been given for sleeping.
“The dam is breaking!”
Right, that emergency that was mentioned. Handy that, in a way, since it meant he'd gotten a chance to wake up a little and get dressed first.
Tor grabbed his trunk of stuff and ran out into the cool morning air. After a second he didn't feel it anymore, but his breath made clouds in front of him as he ran. He needed to see the dam to know what to do, but didn't have a clue as to its location.
He needed a map. Fast too. A dam going on top of the existing flooding would be… bad.
Very bad.
The dam was only about ten miles away, half an hour by horse, the man in tan told him. Of course if what they said was true, they didn't have half an hour. They may not have ten minutes even. Tor got the man to point with a single finger and flew that direction as well as he could using a flying rig and hoping he didn't get too disoriented. After a minute the muddy water glinted enough to see pretty clearly, so Tor just followed it, hoping it was the right branch and he wasn't going to end up over the North Pole or something. It was tense flying, desperate and as fast as he could go.
When he found it, Tor understood why the men had come in clearly frightened. The thing was huge, almost two hundred feet high, set between two small mountains of well rounded stone and it's gray material was cracking as water poured over the top.
Tor considered the situation and realized he just couldn't build a new one fast enough. Given a week, or better, a month, he should be able to do it. Right now, all he could do without dying would be watch it fall. The thing was huge and must have been the size of the King’s palace in the Capital. A little smaller than his own magical place had been during the King’s week festival.
That got Tor thinking.
Could he use one of the new forms of magical house for this? Would it hold? Well, it was basically a shield, no matter what it looked like and if he layered walls closely together inside, it might do. Windows lined up from front to back so the water could spill out? Shrugging Tor pulled out the right amulet and hovered in front of the dam, not a foot over the water. Then he activated the glowing house sigil with a single thought, not having a spare hand to physically tap it.
The house was small to start with, like always, so he focused his mind and filled the space completely. The building grew and shifted, altered in creative ways, so that it got bigger at the top and slowly formed a wedge that was smaller at the bottom. Focus and desperation made it solid, filling the interior with walls and removing any air gaps. It looked like the house was crying from its windows when he stopped. Keeping his mind clear, Tor tried to feel the structure with his eyes, tried to find out if it was holding or not. So far it seemed all right, but he needed to be sure it didn't get away from him any time soon.
Having nothing better to do then, still waiting for it to hold or fail, he turned the hundred plus foot tall, three hundred foot wide house a lovely purple color. It looked bizarre, but it was backing the dam well enough for the moment. Tor moved to the bank and waited. If this was going to fail, he needed to be on hand to try and fix it. After half an hour, a bit of water leaked past stone on the left side, almost imperceptibly. Before anything bad could happen Tor expanded the whole thing until the feedback from the device actually hurt his head a little inside. It was a burning in the back of his mind, a low thing he almost didn't recognize, until it got worse.
Hoping it was a sign off a tight fit he waited again. For hours.
As it neared noon, the sun directly over head, white and gold beating down, he got up, to just start back to the base. This wasn't a permanent solution, but hopefully it would get them through the worst of the flooding and a ways beyond. Possibly years. Once above the tree line, mainly evergreens like he grew up with, but smaller and a bit more twisted by the wind near the coast, Tor saw the nearly twenty people flying in, at what had to be top speed. It took a minute but everyone slowed eventually then dropped slowly, so he did the same. It wasn't like he had more pressing business, right?
Rolph had been the first one there, but wasn't the only one of his friends in the group. Most of them were. Including Sam and Guide. He nodded to everyone, smiling a little.
“Tor! Gods above. I thought you'd be dead by now, trying to hold back a river with your mind. It's exactly what you're not supposed to do… is that a house?” The voice went from worried and slightly scolding to incredulous in three words. Not a record, but the best he'd ever gotten from his friend.
Running over to him Sara jumped into a hug. She'd been crying for some reason, but seemed happy enough to see him at least. Hopefully it wasn't anything major.
“You blocked the river with a house? I… that's brilliant!” Trice tried to hug him too, but had to share with Sara, since she wasn't letting go.
The explanation didn't take long, but Kolb set a detail to watch it for leaks or anything else that might go wrong. Baron Havor got the job along with David Derring and Gersh's brother Johan. Apparently the snap judgment he'd made about the man, that he could be a combat giant, wasn't lost on Kolb either. Tor had worked with him when they were organizing the younger students training. He was decent with a blade, better overall than Tor, but nicer too, letting the smaller man win about half the time, so that Tor wouldn't feel bad about himself or look bad in front of the others. He'd made Tor work for it, but not so hard it was impossible.