P. Power - Knight Esquire

Even holding her down like this was hard. Not hard to do, but it felt… Mean. Wrong. But if he let her up she'd attack him again. Not that it would be right now, but… later, when he couldn't defend himself, in his sleep maybe. Did he have a choice?

His fiancee looked around and shrugged. “Sounds reasonable to me. He's not in a combat rage. I've seen that on him and even if he was, Tor kind of stays reasonable compared to most people, however that works. So, why did Wensa try to kill him? Tor wouldn't lie about something like that. Really, I don't know if he can lie at all, so…” Her voice went into a questioning tone at the end and her hands came up. Right, now what.

“I think I really can kill her through the shield, we can't have someone like her running around trying to murder people, can we? I don't want to kill anyone, but, I don't think she's going to leave me any choice. First she tried to kill me at the shield test and no one believed it, because I wasn't dead, which I guess is fair enough, since she's a Royal Guard and all. Then she threatened to poison me. When I took that off the table, she tries to kick me down some stairs so that it would look like an accident. Which, considering she has orders not to kill me from a Count… Those still hold right?”

Tovey nodded, but he too looked at Rolph. “Not countermanded?”

The Prince nodded in return, if a bit slowly. “Yeah, I checked, nothing like that from the Capital at all. Didn't think there would be.”

When Tor looked up four forms stood around him holding weapons of some kind. It was almost like they'd just appeared in the air, rather than walked up normally, but he knew he was more than a little distracted. Two popped to mind as being instructors at the school, the other two as weapons instructors. The other Royal Guards? Great. The situation hadn't been complicated enough already. Well, it showed that this wasn't just Wensa then, didn't it? The silvery glints in their hands looked deadly, especially being pointed at him.

“Down!” Tor yelled as they opened fire on him. He spun, sweeping his little force lance across where they stood. They, unlike Wensa, hadn't gotten hold of any shields, at least not any good ones. They flew back hard and didn't get up quickly. The lance he had didn't hurt them directly of course, it just made their bodies move after all, but the impact against the ground probably stung. Without hesitation he hit Wensa again as she struggled to get up, probably to attack him again.

“Uh-un. Your friends aren't going to help you out of this.” It took going back and forth several times, but he finally had all the other guards knocked out about half a minute later and didn't lose Wensa either.

“Right so, if there's no order to kill me from the crown, then all of these royals guards have gone rogue? Little hard to believe. I need an explanation on this pretty quick here Rolph… I don't know what to do, but I know I can't leave them alive to attack me later, Royal Guards don't stop. You told me that yourself. So… I mean, I have to defend myself, right?” His voice had taken on a panicked air but no one laughed at him.

Not knowing what else to do, he started building a small, tiny really, explosive field inside Wensa's skull. One with a simple mental trigger on it, so that he could set it off on command. It took about half an hour to form something that wouldn't just fade in seconds, but in the end he had one ready. During that time he'd had to knock out the other people trying to attack him several times, because they really didn't give up. It was both scary and annoying. Finally the Dean and Rolph managed to convince them to put their weapons down and move back.

“Alright, Wensa… I just built an explosive inside your head. What you're going to do right now is deactivate the shield you're wearing and go to whatever lock up we have around here. Then you'll stay there until we decide what to do with you. If you try to leave, no matter where you go, I can set this off. If you attack me I'll set it off too. Even if it means getting your brain splattered all over me. Do you understand? You have… Let's say, ten seconds, to comply.”

He turned off the weapon in his hand and put it away. It looked all confident, but what he'd just said about the field in her head, most of it was a lie. Showed how well Trice knew him, didn't it?

Yes, Tor could trigger it right here, watching her from ten feet away, but twenty feet away would be hard and fifty impossible, at least under this kind of stress. Plus, in about ten minutes the field would fade totally. He could set it off now, but the effects just wouldn't last all that long without a lot more work.

The woman glared at him as she got up, which earned her a blast from the force lance, that he pulled out almost instantly.

“No… I said deactivate the shield, take it off and give it to Trice. Then, if you know what's good for you I suggest you don't try to attack me or even look at me like you want to. This isn't that hard, really. Just stop trying to kill me, and don't force me to kill you.”

Seriously! What did it take to get this woman to not try and attack him? She finally tapped the field, but only because Rolph and Tovey both ordered her on that point directly, then she took it off and passed it to Trice. It wasn't around her neck, just in an inner pocket. Tor walked all the guards, hands high over their heads to a small building that he'd never noticed before, just off the commons. It wasn't that he hadn't seen it, just that he couldn't notice it, at least not without focusing on it tightly, which in the nearly three years he'd been at the school he'd never had any reason to do. Some kind of mental disruption field? That made a certain kind of sense. It had two small holding cells in it. Once inside it was easier to notice by far, like a normal building almost. Tor had all the Royal Guards locked up inside a minute and a half, then he spoke to them through the bars.

“Right. I have no doubt that any of you could escape from here within moments. If you do, if any of you do, I'll be forced to protect myself. That means detonating Wensa first. It's true, the rest of you could run away and I can't do much to you. But I still suggest that you wait for this situation to be resolved first.”

Then he walked out. Everyone but Rolph followed. Staying to talk for some reason. He caught up to them in the commons a few minutes later, looking… vexed. Tor shook badly, pure fear reaction, but Trice held him anyway, even if he did shake like a tiny dog in her arms. No one said much for a long time. It was the Dean that spoke first.

“Well, that seems settled for now. I don't think anyone will risk going anywhere for now. They should know that you can't have built a field strong enough to last the night in her head in that time, but then again, you've done a half dozen other things they probably knew couldn't be done already, so they may not want to risk it.”

Rolph shrugged, looking at Tor directly.

“Wensa swears that she didn't attack you on the stairs Tor. She said that she only went after the weapon in our room because she saw an opening. It is how their trained, I can vouch for that. You pointed a weapon at her, so she responded as best she could. It also explains why the others came after you like they did. They didn't see you protecting yourself from an attack, just subduing one of their own. I ordered them to all stay in holding for now, just so you wouldn't have to try and fight them. We wouldn't want you to get hurt or anything, right?” Rolph gave him a smile as if he was placating Tor, which was appreciated greatly. Much better than the chewing out he probably deserved for letting all this happen, even if he didn't know how it could have been avoided.

Tor nodded and took a very deep breath, trying to regain his composure a little. Those people might have lost temporarily, but the same trick wouldn't work twice. Wensa had nearly gotten him on the stairs, even though he walked around wearing a shield almost all the time. He'd never even thought about someone just kicking him down some stairs! What else had he missed? If that had been a knife or a cutter instead of a foot he'd be dead right now. Did he have to live his whole life with a shield on?