Closed [The Bronze Woods] Sword And Shielding

[Michael Kyber]

Spring 2nd, 517AV

The heat of the sun beat down upon the Bronze Woods, stealing the moisture from the already dry grass and plants littered across the forest floor. Without the water that should have come with winter much of the vegetation was becoming withered and dry as it struggled to absorb the amount of moisture it needed from the soil, and in turn the animal population was starting to decline as the animals that usually fed off of those plants found their food sources declining day by day.

There was however patches of the woods where a few plants still grew green and healthy; the borders of the smalls streams and rivers that flowed through the forest like veins. The abnormal weather had dried up many of these streams, but a few of them still flowed with a gentle trickle of water. One of these streams was the one that ran by Thazz's campsite, where he and Michael now sat as they begun their next lesson.

"For today's lesson we'll mainly be focusing on your shielding." Thazz said, taking a seat on a tree stump. "How much do you know about shielding already?"

"It is a technique in which one coats an object or person with djed in order to protect it from other djed, such as conjurations of Reimancy." Michael replied. "It cannot be made anywhere independently of itself; it must be created around a base object, but can be made of varying sizes, shapes and thicknesses."

Thazz grinned. "Good, that's the basics of it. However shields can do more than just block djed. Each shield can be set another 'task', which can allow it to block something else. For example..." He held out his hand, which quickly began to fade in colour until it was pitch black, like a shadow. "This shield I just cast over my hand blocks light from passing through. Imagine how useful this could be in a infiltration mission, or how useful a sound blocking shield would be for stealth?"

Michael frowned. "I don't get it. How does it do that?"

"It's rather the same as willing Res to transform into water." Thazz replied. "If you just create a barrier with nothing specific in mind then the barrier will be adequate for blocking wild loose djed, but against objects like weapons or people it won't do anything. However if you create a barrier willing your djed, much like you would will Res to transform, to block out a certain type of djed then anything that bears that djed will be unable to pass through it. For example if you tasked it to block light djed then no light would be able to pass through it, and when you get more proficient at shielding if you tasked it to block djed that determined how sharp something is then bladed weapons would be unable to pass. Understand?"

"Yes Ser!"

"Good, then lets see how good you are at shielding already!" Thazz replied, picking up a rock next to him and tossing it to Michael. "Don't worry about size for now, just shield that rock adequately as best as you can. I want to see your technique."

Taking the stone Michael sat down and began to empty his mind of stray thoughts, focusing only on the stone in his hands. From somewhere within him Michael pulled the djed out of his body and poured it around the stone, making gestures with his hands as if he were painting on it to help visualize his djed coating the stone. When his work was complete Michael willed his djed to freeze into place and form the barrier, and like a window quickly frosting over the djed formed into a shield.

Thazz took the stone from him and examined it critically. "Hmm, not bad. A little weaker at some parts, but fairly well balanced overall."

Michael looked shocked. "You can see it Ser? I thought you couldn't use auristics!"

"I don't need it, all shielders can see a shield that's weaker than they are." Thazz replied. "And you can even learn to recognize what shielders were made by a certain shielder. You see all shielders have their own different ways of making their barriers, and the djed they use to create it lingers on within their shields, so by observing the way the shield was made as the colours and shapes it takes on as a result of the djed inside it one can learn another shielders 'signature' if you will."

"Wait, what do you mean by different ways of making a barrier?" Michael asked.

"Some think of their djed as links of chains or threads of string which they then weave into a barrier as they would make chailmail or clothing. Some pour it out as a thick mist that lingers around the object. Some think of it as painting a picture over it. Honestly whatever way they do it is up to them and how they best imagine their djed to be, in the end it's their skill that will determine how good their shield is, not how they imagine it. You seem to think of your shield as ice forming over, I hear that's a fairly common way of doing it up in Taldera."

"I see. So how can I improve my technique?" Michael asked.

"Well... I guess don't just focus on the lake freezing over as a whole, but think of how each bit of djed freezes into a snowflake and how those flakes all link up together. Let's give that a practice now shall we?"

"Do you want me to shield the rock again?"

Thazz shot him a savage grin. "No Michael, it's time to up the training. I have something better in mind..."

[Michael Kyber]

"So... what exactly am I supposed to be doing exactly?"

Michael stood by the side of the stream, his armor removed and placed down in a pile by the tree trunk Thazz had been sitting on. Thazz stood a couple of feet from him, still grinning in a manner that seemed to promise that whatever he had in store was going to be highly enjoyable for him, but not so much for Michael.

"Placing a shield over a rock is a good way to practice protecting a valuable object, however most of the time the thing you'll want to be protecting wont be an object, it'll be yourself." Thazz replied. "I can tell you from experience that shielding gives you an invaluable advantage when fighting against another magic user, but in order to make use of that advantage you need to learn to craft a shield around yourself that, like a good armor, has no chinks of openings for an enemy to take advantage of. When I was just a squire like yourself I always neglected to focus on the shielding around my feet, and I almost paid dearly for it after a particularly canny mage nearly blasted my legs off. Ah, good times..." For a second Thazz seemed to be lost in a happy memory, but quickly snapped his attention back to the present. "Anyway for this exercise what I want you to do is put up the strongest, most powerful shield you can possibly manage around yourself. Take as long as you need to make it, we have time."

Sceptical, but willing to trust in his master's wisdom, Michael closed his eyes and started to enter a meditative trance. He force his attention to turn away from the sights, smells and sound around him, but instead within himself, on the rhythm of his breathing and the position of his body. Slowly he began to push as many of those thoughts out of his mind as he could as well, focusing on thinking on as little as he possibly could.

When his mind was sufficiently clear, Michael reached within himself and called upon his djed to respond to his will. He began with the top of him head excreting a tiny portion of djed right at its center and willing it to freeze into a six-pointed snowflake shape, and like a flower blooming the djed formed itself into the image he'd held in his mind. On the tip of each point Michael then called up another portion of djed, willing it for take the same form and piece-by-piece growing the shield like links in a chain.

To an outsider who could perceive such things it looked like a layer of frost was slowly but surely creeping its way down Michael from his head, its patterns of tiny interlinked snowflakes coming together to form a barrier of ice. However as the shield reached his torso and Michael started to struggle keeping his focus noticeable parts of he shield began to look thinner and weaker. It was hard to make each flake of djed uniformly the same; with some he used too much djed by accident and made them bigger than normal, and with some he didn't use enough and made them smaller, and these irregular pieces didn't link mesh together as they should have done and disrupted the pattern.

Eventually the shield covered his legs and completed itself at his feet, and as Michael opened his eyes and looked at himself he couldn't help but marvel at how his body appeared to be encased in a thin silvery ice. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement from somewhere in front of him, and he looked up just as a bolt of water flew through the air and hit him square in the stomach, smashing apart his shield and sending him toppling to the ground.

"Hey! What was that for?" Michael cried indignantly, glaring up at Thazz who's extended arm gave him away as the one who fired the bolt.

Thazz laughed heartily. "That, my young apprentice, is training. I toned down that bolt just now to a level that you would have been able to block with your shield if you had truly put your all into making it, yet it was still able to break through and hit you. Why was that?"

Michael thought about it for a moment. "Because you hit an area where my shield was weaker."

Thazz nodded. "That's right, and it was weaker because you started to get impatient at the time you were forming it and rushed things. The first rule of shielding is this Michael; a shield is only ever as strong as it weakest point. I advise you too remember that, its good advice both in shielding and in other areas of life too. The easiest way to defeat something is to identify and target its weakness, so by contrast if you want to make yourself harder to defeat you'd better cover up all yours." He motioned for Michael to stand. "That's how this exercise is going to go; you're going to form the best shield you can around yourself, and I'm going to shoot a water bolt just weak enough for you to block at whatever part of the shield I think is most vulnerable. If the shield holds then good job, give yourself a pat on the back. If not... well you'll get a nice little reminder to try harder against the next shot. Come on, let's get to it!"

[Michael Kyber]

Taking slow, deep breaths Michael calmed his mind and allowed all his stray thoughts to drift away until his mind was as clear and peaceful as possible. Once again he then turned his attention inward to the djed within him and willed it to spring forth, forming it into ice-like patterns at the top of his head just like last time and slowly spreading it down his body.

As he reached his torso Michael's concentration began to lapse once again, but this time instead of trying to plow through at the same pace Michael slowed down considerably and focused on getting each part of his shield as even as possible. Bit by bit Michael formed his djed into as even snowflake shapes as he could manage and interlocked them together, slowly growing his shield to cover him. But even when he took more time on each link in the shield the constant repetition became harder and harder to concentrate on, and again the shield became patchy and thin in places the lower down it grew.

When he was finished Michael opened his eyes again in time to see Thazz summoning another bolt of water out of the nearby stream. With a flick of his wrist Thazz sent the water bolt flying towards Michael's leg, where it struck him on his left shin and bloke apart his shield easily.

"Come on Michael, you're not making this much of a challenge." Thazz joked. "If you know that your shield will start to stretch thinner the longer you go on then adjust to the situation."

"Adjust how?" Michael asked, wincing at the stinging sensation in his shin.

Thazz smirked. "Well I can't tell you all the answers now can I? Come on, try again."

Michael shook out his leg to try and get the stinging feeling to fade, and then once again closed his eyes and entered a meditative state, focusing on bringing out and interlinking his djed again. As he began forming his shield at the top of his head however a thought crossed his mind; why necessarily start his shield in one place? Ice could form in multiple patches and link together as it grew with no problems, so why shouldn't his shield be able to as well?

One by one Michael turned his attention to key points across his body; his feet, knees, hands, elbows, head, stomach, pelvis and the centre of his chest, and on each point formed a small patch of shielding djed. By working on them first the shields at these points were as evenly and strongly made as he could make them, which was admittedly still pretty weak but strong enough at least to block the bolts Thazz was shooting at him. Bit by bit Michael then rotated his attention through each of those points, adding on links after links of djed to slowly grow them out.

As time went on the links grew more and more uneven an weaker, forming weaker patches in the shield, but this time the weaker patches weren't all focused around the leg area. Instead they were spaced out in the areas between the points Michael had grown the shield from, areas of his body that tended to be stronger and better suited to taking the brunt of attacks.

Thazz nodded in approval. "Good, very good. You acted on the logic that if a shield has to be stretched thin anyway then it would be better to prioritize protecting the more vulnerable areas of your body. Sadly it seems you forgot something..."

With a gesture Thazz brought another bolt of water to his hand and shot it at Michael, though this time aimed it just over Michael's head. As the bolt sailed over the squire it curved downwards in mid air and struck Michael in the back squarely between his shoulders, the place his shield had been stretched thinnest.

"... that just because I'm standing in front of you doesn't mean that that's where I'll attack you from. Never forget to watch your back Michael; people may choose to call it cowardly, but its undeniable that attacking someone from behind has the best chance of succeeding."