After five minutes of getting pelted I call a time-out so I can recast with a smaller shield held closer to my body.

Liv and Heather ignore my completely reasonable request and continue to pepper me with dodgeballs while I cast.

They avoid my hands, so even though it takes me five tries I do eventually get the spell off. And I recognize that it’s good training, just, argh.

The spell isn’t getting hung up on things, exactly, but I’m getting tired of it kicking up rocks, rattling the doors and walls of the house, throwing chairs around, and generally wreaking havoc as Heather and Liv chase me all over the training field while everyone else laughs. I’d originally kept it at a distance because I’d thought I could get my revenge by body-slamming one of them with it, but they’re way too fast for that to be an effective strategy. So I pull the shield in to give myself another fraction of a second to react to incoming projectiles. I also decide to go with something much more like a fantasy-game tower shield than anything realistic, figuring that because it doesn’t obstruct my vision or weigh anything I’m better off with coverage. I’m still not great with the spell so I still end up with something with a much narrower aspect ratio than I’d expected, maybe seven feet tall and two feet wide. I set the range to minimum so it attaches pretty much directly to my hand.

After another fifteen minutes of sweating, panting, and getting hit in the side of the head by their tag-team cheating, that height error is ultimately how I get my vengeance. When I flee around a corner from Liv’s demented barrage of hacky sacks and Heather’s standing not four feet from me with a dodgeball locked and loaded, I yelp and flail my shield wildly in her direction. Instead of getting hit in the face with a dodgeball, I catch her with the top end of my shield and send her flying.

I also whack myself in the legs and eat dirt, but I consider sore knees and a bloody nose to be a perfectly worthwhile trade-off.

“So,” I ask, pinching my nose so I’m not bleeding all over the tavern area where we’ve claimed a table. “How bad am I?”

Heather, relaxing next to me, utterly pristine despite having been launched twenty feet, laughs. “Not bad at all. You’ve probably never tried to hurt anyone in your life.”

“For some reason I feel like I should feel insulted,” I gripe. “Which is entirely wrong, because I am very happy to not be a violent meathead.”

“Which means you don’t have any bad habits and we don’t have to worry about you getting carried away,” Liv tells me, setting down a mug of water and a stack of towels at my elbow.

“Screaming and flailing isn’t a bad habit?” I ask, grabbing a towel and using it to clean my free hand off.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Liv jokes. “But, no, that’s normal. It’ll go away naturally as you build more effective habits. Here, let me get that for you.” She pours some of the water out on another towel and starts wiping at the hand I’m using to hold my nose closed.

I close my eyes and let her clean. “Like screaming and very carefully and intentionally hitting you with my shield?”

“Yes, actually.” Heather thinks for a bit. “It’s a fascinating weapon. I’m not sure whether to refer you to an instructor who knows how to use a shield as a weapon or one who will work with you to develop an entirely novel style.”

“Honestly, neither yet. I expect my capabilities to evolve rapidly. This time next month—uh, in thirty days I’ll probably have this turned into a persistent bubble that selectively blocks things that are sharp, fast, or magical.” I think. “Or, actually, Liv, I’ll probably spend some time working with you on nailing down a really good definition of ‘dangerous’ that I can use going forward. Maybe rope Ji in to provide examples too.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Argh, I really need a notebook. I need to be writing all of this down. I have too much stuff in my head.”

“You know, I do have a near-perfect memory,” Liv reminds me. “You can ramble at me and I’ll transcribe it when you get your slate.”

“…I’m an idiot,” I groan. “Thank you so much.”

By the time my nose stops bleeding, I’ve managed to transfer what I think is my entire to-do list to Liv’s far more reliable head. With some modifications, of course. For example, instead of developing a way to clean and sanitize my underthings with magic, Liv and Heather recommend a surplus stasis-enchanted BIA evidence box and a Gifted launderer.

I also start making inroads on some of the other insanity this place has to offer.

For example: Do they have years or seasons or any sort of cyclic weather at all? At worst maybe a moon?

Answer: Yes! Standard warm-cold-rainy cycle, takes about five hundred days. No moon, though.

Question: So why do they measure times in spans of days? There’s no way they haven’t identified the physical processes that cause that cycle.

Answer: They started out with a solar calendar, but every so often someone does some ritual that jumps Land’s weather forward a few seasons. They tried adjusting the calendar to fix it once, but the next time it happened they’d learned their lesson and just took the opportunity to renumber everything in days so they didn’t have to do it again.

“There’s a reason the Wasteland Kingdoms are a wasteland,” Heather explains grimly. “If you’re the only person that knows it’s coming, you stockpile, everyone else starves, and you rule the ashes.”

“Holy shit.” I can barely believe my ears. That’s horrifying. That’s… that’d be one of the worse famines in Earth’s history. A global volcanic winter or worse, depending on the details. War crimes doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Do you… does the Republic do anything about that? Like, I understand that imperialism is bad and difficult besides that, but… Please say yes.”

“We do,” Liv says, hesitating. She and Heather exchange a glance. Heather shrugs minutely, as if to say it’s not her decision. Liv apparently decides she’s okay talking about whatever it is, since she continues. “I spent fifteen hundred days in the Wasteland Kingdoms doing exactly that: keeping an eye on petty tyrants and doing what I could to stop them.”

“Oh. No wonder you’re so, uh, covered in knives,” I realize, giving her clothing a still-slightly-disbelieving look. I guess that it’s not too surprising that she’s the Republic of Eld’s equivalent of 007 or Special Circumstances. “I’m surprised you don’t jangle when you walk. And that you’re not, like, level-capped and infinitely dangerous. Is that how you got your Perception score where it is?”

“One of the ways, yes,” she answers. “And before you ask, I quit because they won’t let anyone do it for too long. Surprisingly bad leveling, and too stressful besides.”

“I… I can imagine. Perfect memory, hell. I’m sorry,” I apologize helplessly.

“It’s okay,” Liv shrugs, in that way that means it’s sort of not okay at all. “But I would prefer to talk about something else now.”

“Yeah, uh. Okay. Next to-do item.” I close my eyes and rub my forehead with my free hand, trying to dig things out of the depths of my memory. “Ahah! How do the compasses work?”

“Magic!”

“Asdjhggsdkjfsdk,” I say, elegantly and eloquently articulating my complete satisfaction with this answer.

Liv and Heather spend the next hour and a half running me through a gauntlet of tests and exercises. As could easily be expected, I am a slow, out-of-shape pile of jello. My combat instincts are effectively nonexistent. I have surprisingly good hand-eye coordination and reflexes, but that’s about it. Sans magic I am approximately as dangerous as a pool noodle. With magic I’m only slightly more dangerous, and then only if I can hunker down and bait my opponent into closing enough that I can bap them with my shield. Even then I don’t have a good follow-up.

I do find that I can simultaneously hold Find Spellcraft and Shield for One, which means that Heather has to actually try to sneak up on me instead of activating a skill and blending seamlessly into any nearby natural terrain.

I also demonstrate Make Ready, which works out great. I cast it, I cast Shield for One, I deactivate my casting points. The next time I activate them the shield goes up pretty close to instantly, reaching maximum power within a second or two. I have to set the dimensions when I cast, so I have to pick something generic and predictable rather than tailoring it to the situation, but that’s tolerable and it does speed up deployment just a little bit.

As I throw my shield up to deflect a whirling piece of debris from the latest spar between Shi Ke Xiangshu and Osmund, the two martial artists who continue to demolish the plywood house every few minutes, I decide that I’m keeping a shield ready 24/7 from now on.