“Now, it's about three miles to the range, I don't know if we can get a wagon out, so… do you think you can walk it?”
Uhg. He could, Tor was pretty sure, but it would ache. The three miles out wouldn't be so bad, but coming back, that would not be fun. He told her this, hoping she wouldn't just think he was a wimp. He smiled. Really that should be, he hoped she didn't think he was more of a wimp. She probably had his measure pretty well already after all.
“Oh… Well, I suppose we could fly, but we'd have to check the gear out and it's all booked for the day, so, since that's not an option I guess we should cancel that. Too bad, because I really wanted to get your take on the state of our practice weapons. Maybe soon?” She didn't seem that put out at least and didn't punish him with a lot of extra work, though she did ask him to walk to his dorm and back as many times as he could without hurting himself, to help build his injured leg back up.
Tor didn't bother with dinner after that, it was still mid-afternoon when he couldn't comfortably walk anymore, so he started working on the poison testing device before he could collapse from hunger. The light turned out to be the simple part, now that he understood it, adding in the proper fields for all the foods he ate was harder. Not that they weren't familiar to him, he ate them after all, so it wasn't that difficult to remember.
No the hard part was holding all the fields at once, in the end he had to do them in a cascading style, adding one to another and into much larger sub-fields that he used for the final make. It took all night and most of the next day. And then the day after that.
Someone fed him something, which he hoped wasn't poisoned, and they gave him water to drink. Right. He added water to the list of things, then juices and cow’s milk, goat’s milk and struggling to remember what it was like from the few sips he'd ever had, wine and hard cider.
The complexity of the field was huge compared to what he'd ever done before. The power levels needed were small, but there was just so much to focus on. It wasn't enough just to know food, he had to separate the plates and cups, from things that could be used to harm a person as well. Plus hundreds of other things, including just a sense that something might be unbalanced in a food item. Or around it. Diseased food too.
Finally after a long time, the days not making any impression on him anymore, he opened his eyes. Tor was alone, and it was morning. He thought. It was light outside at least. He stood, barely making it to his feet, legs almost not able to hold him up.
How long had he been out? Longer than five or six days at least. He knew what that felt like, having done it before a couple of times now.
Tor didn't make it to the door before it opened and Rolph came in with Kolb and the nice older man with the beard he'd seen before. He looked at them and smiled.
“Hey.” His voice croaked. Tor had to clear it for a while, and drink some water, before it just sounded like a frog lived in there.
“Wow, how long was I working?” He almost apologized for not greeting everyone properly first, but Rolph answered before he could say anything else.
“Eleven days! I'd thought you were just working on something at first, I mean I could see the template in your hand and all, I get what that means, but then you just didn't move. Two days ago you stopped even drinking water, so Trice and I decided we had to get help. I don't know what that is, but is the latest diaper rash treatment or whatever really worth all this?” The look on Rolph's face was stern and more than a little worried.
Eleven days.
Gods. No wonder he couldn't speak. Worse Karen would probably kill him when he went back. Kolb looked worried too, but the girl had been put in charge of his training, and as far as everyone else could tell her new trainee had run away after only one day. He decided to distract them all, if he could. He held up the template, one made in wood, with lines written over both the front and the back of it in tiny script. It was twice the size of the normal wooden planks he got, because he'd found the first two he tried weren't big enough for everything he needed to write down.
He pointed at it.
“Testing device for food, to tell if it's poisoned. It should tell us if there's anything in the food that doesn't belong.” Holding up his hand he grinned tiredly. “Yes, that includes exotic spices and foods that I just haven't encountered… But also poisons, inert materials, and so on. I need to test it, but I don't know how…”
The older man whose name he'd never even heard stroked his beard slightly. “I think I can arrange for that. You… Probably need food, water and sleep first though. Let's say tomorrow at noon? That gives you nearly a full day to recuperate. Do you think that's enough?” The voice sounded like the man was truly concerned about Tor's health and well being.
Nice of him.
Tor nodded and laid back to go to sleep before anyone even left the room. A while later he was woken up by hard punches on his right arm. They hurt, and didn't stop, so he opened his eyes. Trice sat next to him crying, and kept hitting him.
“Don't… ever… do that again! We thought you were dead… or going to die soon anyway! Promise me you won't do this kind of thing anymore!” She looked scared, really scared. Rolph handed him some bread and cheese.
“Bought it in town from a randomly selected shop I've never gone into before. Next we'll send someone else for food, if you need more. I got a lot…” He turned to Trice and shook his head, but gave her a half hug.
“Trice, don't ask him not to do things he may have too. Just…” Rolph turned to Tor and held his gaze. “Just promise that you'll be more careful and try not to die? If you're going to try impossible things, couldn't you at least let us all know first?”
That, he told them, would be doable, he just hadn't realized how hard this one was going to be at all. It was so complex that he wasn't even sure it would work. That earned him a punch in the chest from Trice.
Hard.
Tor rubbed at it gently while she spoke, figuring that it was going to bruise for certain.
“Oh, it'll work. If you scared me like that for nothing, then the weddings off, because they'll never find your body!” She growled this at him in a way that made him swallow hard and blanch a little.
OK, so it would work. Or else. He could get behind that. Casually he tried to work his way over to his shield, which sat on the table next to the bed.
Rolph laughed, getting what he was trying for, and made him eat as much food as Tor thought he could without getting sick, which wasn't much after the long fast and then slowly sip cool water until he fell back to sleep. When he woke it was black outside, so he lay there for a while, not wanting to turn on a light. Eventually, board and stiff, he decided to make some copies of the field into metal.
They copied fast. Almost too easily, given all the work he'd had to do originally. The copper pieces he'd gotten for it were about the shape and size of his little finger. Each had a tiny sigil on it already, just a mark he'd cut into each with the little cutter that he still had from when he built the first shield. It made a groove that should work well enough as an activation focus.
A tiny area of extra shiny copper on each piece, he thought it looked nice. Not glorious or stunning in any way, but clear and easy to use. That counted, right? This was just for him and, if it worked, his friends. It wasn't like most people had to fear being poisoned by Wensa after all. They probably should, but if they didn't know her, that might give most people a little protection at least. Even she wouldn't just break into homes at random to get people.