"Must you eat in front of ?" said Alistar over the incessant grumbling of his stomach. "And why did you buy so much food? Did...did you perhaps have a change of heart?" He was sitting atop one of the logs that his master kept around for him to practice specific sword swings on, rolling his hands around in an effort to regain feeling in his arms.
Tramon took another bite of the at skewer that he had brought back with him just before sundown, picking a crumb of bread from his beard as he chewed.
"I told you that I’d be disappointed if you were still here when I returned. I was out for the entire day, and yet you’ve only cut three cords of rope?"
"But Master, eating in front of will only make it more difficult for to keep going." He glanced at the wicker basket at Tramon’s side, gulping loudly as his eyes shifted from the dozen or so at skewers to the large loaf of freshly baked bread and then to the baked potatoes that sat steaming in the cool evening air. "I...I can’t focus right now."
"You think I have nothing better to do than tease a little runt like you? This is also a form of training."
Alistar had no doubts that his master indeed had nothing better to do, though he wasn’t in any position to call the man out. The al that Treves had given him had kept him full for quite a while, but it had been many hours since then and he had used up a trendous amount of energy on his constant attempts at cutting the rope.
Reading Alistar’s expression, the sword master gave a sharp snort. "If you can’t even maintain your focus in front of a bit of street food, how do you expect to keep a cool head if you fall into a dangerous situation? If you’re really serious about being a swordsman, then you’ll have to be able to keep moving forward even in the face of unexpected dangers and temptations."
Unable to refute the man, Alistar mulled over the logic of his words. He couldn’t help but recall the day that his uncle Raidon had been murdered by Bertrand Loran, a fellow slave that had been freed from Crystellum and evidently a forr friend of his family’s. If Alistar had been able to keep calm and collected at that ti, he could have used the powerful magic crystal that he’d found in the mines to kill Bertrand before the man would have been able to do anything to his uncle. This was a constant source of regret in his heart.
Re-solidifying his resolve, he did his best to ignore the salivating scent that pervaded the area, instead focusing on forming another little blade of swordsman’s aura that soon protruded from the tip of his right index finger. He had seen the most success with this composition of the unique energy and had slowly been reducing the width and thickness of the manifestation so that it was no thicker than a sheet of paper and no larger than an untrimd fingernail. Like this, the energy had a stronger base that made it more difficult for it to dissipate, and it was solid enough that despite its thinness a lot more pressure could be applied to a much smaller area.
With this, I should be able to...
Alistar began to saw away at the most accessible area of the rope that bound him and was elated as he began to feel so of the fibres giving way. This ti around, he managed to cut an entire cord in half, looking over at his master in excitent.
Huh? When did he go inside?
He could sense Tramon’s aura around his sleeping area, aning that he had either gone to bed early or was reading one of the many books that Alistar had arranged in neat stacks along one of his walls. Oddly enough, he had left the basket of food outside next to the chair where he had been sitting.
Alistar couldn’t help but wonder if the food was a trap, since his master had firmly stressed that he wouldn’t provide him with any sustenance while he was working on his current assignnt. Still, if he didn’t eat it then so of it would spoil, and Alistar wasn’t one to waste food.
How do I get my hands on it without him noticing?
Tramon had extrely acute senses, and would definitely hear it if he left the spot where he was currently sitting. Not only that, but his last attempt at cutting the rope had drained him of the last dregs of his swordsman’s aura, leaving only enough to prevent him from fainting. Eyes entranced by the basket of food, Alistar decided to try his hand at one of the opening spells that were contained in the deceased Haussen Scuff’s grimoire, the art of moving and manipulating the shape of water. As things were, he could only collect water into loose shapes and wasn’t capable of moving these any farther than a pace or so away from him. If he could manage to gather so moisture and maintain control of it from several paces away, then there was a chance that he could snag sothing from the basket without standing and drawing his master’s focus.
Alistar drew about a cup’s worth of water from the ground beneath his feet, willing it to float in front of him in a tranquil, undisturbed globe. Following the instructions that Haussen Scuff had detailed in the opening pages of his grimoire, he aligned his inner energies with the minute amount that was naturally contained within the water and mimicked their composition until he achieved a perfect match. This didn’t require as much focus as he’d imagined, hardly any more than the usual amount necessary to gather water into a globe. This struck him as odd, as the notes had detailed the difficulty of the task for those not accustod to it.
With a wisp of his will, he directed the water to constrict at the sides until it was in an elliptical shape. Next, he arranged it into a square, a triangle and then three separate, smaller globes. Is it really this easy? I could have figured this out myself. While he had to focus a bit harder the farther he willed the water away from where he was sitting, the more he fiddled around with the movents the more familiar he beca with them.
Fifteen minutes after he’d begun to put his previous readings into practice, Alistar moved on to freezing the bits of water that he had molded into certain shapes. He started off small, with little detachnts that he froze into coins that resembled the dinsions of silver lucets, and then a larger amount that solidified into a crudely-shaped dagger.
I did it!
Forgetting his hunger for a mont, he basked in the excitent that boiled within him as he realized that he’d just taken his first step towards mastering a spell that would develop into a form of battle magic further down the line. He still had a long way to go, such as learning reinforcent magic similar to that which had been cast on the ropes that bound him. Haussen Scuff had incorporated that spell into his ice magics to make his creations harder to break and thus significantly more dangerous, but such things would have to wait until later. For now, Alistar was ready to test his luck on the basket of food.
Directing a small portion of water over to the area near Tramon’s front door, he stifled a gulp as he lowered the silent sphere so that it completely engulfed one of the at skewers, at which point he froze it in order to give the globe so grip. Clearing his mind so that it was a completely blank slate, he willed the chunk of ice to float back over to him in a shaking, unsteady manner. Once in front of him he reverted it back to water, at which point the skewer slipped through its grasp and fell to the ground with a light thud.
Heart stopping for a mont, Alistar let out a steady sigh of relief when he sensed no movent from inside of the little ho. Returning the water to the soil near his seat, he did an awkward squat and picked up the skewer, which was now frozen solid. Unfazed, he summoned two small flas, one in each palm, and took his ti thawing and then heating up the at, at which point he scarfed it down while lying on the grass.
Eyes trailing over to the basket, Alistar quickly set about repeating the process, intent on replenishing his energy as quickly as possible. He hadn’t heard from anyone at the estate over the past two days and thus had no idea what had happened after the altercation at the collegia’s training grounds. Had Anice and Lessa been reprimanded on his behalf? Were his cousins behaving nicely towards the girls while he wasn’t around? Not knowing these things was very stressful, but thinking about them wouldn’t do him any good so long as he was still bound here by this blasted rope.
If only his swordsman’s aura was as abundant as his inner energies, he thought with a sigh, staring at the limiters on his left hand as he rubbed at his stomach in satisfaction. If that were the case, would he ever need to take a break?
Returning to the spot where he had been sitting before, Alistar took a deep breath and then resud his attempts at cutting the remainder of the rope, which consisted of at least twenty-five cords. Deciding that he wouldn’t sleep until he finally freed himself, Alistar steeled his resolve and quickly got back to work.
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