From the way he just addressed me I got the strong sense that this man was a noble… and not a nice one. I understood that if you grew up being told you were better than all the commoners, you would probably start to believe it. I also understood that someone who thinks they are better than other people, even if they aren’t inherently evil, can be very dangerous to their ‘lessers’ if they feel that they are acting out of line. Like how a long time civil servant, who has a family and is generally a good person and a decent neighbor, can snap when facing someone they view as a low-life scumbag.

I understood it, but I also knew it was bullshit, and I wasn’t going to put up with it if I had a choice.

My first guess was that these three were the rest of Alder’s quad, his three closest friends within the Garrison. I doubt they were looking to kill me, as that might get them in serious trouble, even if they were nobles, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to at least cripple an arm or a leg… maybe both, depending on how bad Alder’s injuries were.

Tetra seemed frozen, so I nudged her towards the door – if I was right about what was going to happen, anywhere would be safer than here. She looked back at me, her expression shocked, before she took a deep breath and shifted her feet into a fighting stance. What the hell! I stared at her… impressed and terrified at the same time. Unless she was secretly a Cultivator (very unlikely in this culture) she would get slaughtered trying to face these armored assholes.

“Tetra, I’m a Cultivator, I’ll be fine! But you have to get out of here!” I whispered at her urgently, causing her to look back at me in shock again.

“Well, anything to say?” Said the warrior in the middle, his voice still muffled by his helmet. “If you beg for mercy we will only take one arm.”

I must have hurt Alder pretty badly to make them act like this… not to mention the lengths Sylko seemed willing to go… and that’s when I realized that this was a setup. This whole thing, sending me to clean toilets in the Garrison, it was all just so these bastards could corner me without anyone getting in the way.

The two soldiers on either side started pulling the heavy door shut, a move that would seal us in and muffle the sound of what they were planning to do.

“Tetra, go!” I said again, the urgency in my voice finally forcing her into action.

She bolted forwards, having no choice but to pass the soldiers on her way out, though she did her best to keep as far away from them as possible.

“Off to get help?” Said the solder on the right side of the door, her echoing voice betraying her gender. Just as the massive door to the safe room slammed shut, the female soldier took an amazingly fast step towards Tetra, and before she (or I) could react Tetra was sent hurtling across the room with a scream of pain.

And that’s when I got angry.

And as always happens when I get angry, I started to calm down – everything became clear, and I knew exactly what must be done. I glanced at Tetra. There was nothing I could do for her, at least not right now. I had no healing skills, and even if I did I’d need to take out the three soldiers first.

They were probably cultivators, I thought, meaning they might have ranged attack skills. They wouldn't start off with them, because their aim is to cripple, not kill. So I could take one of them out with a lightning bolt before having to rely on my shield. I figured that if I zapped their helmets a few times, it should heat up enough to knock them unconscious (or worse).

I wanted to target the woman who had hit Tetra, but the man who had spoken before was much closer to me (and thus a greater threat). I had already started to funnel power out of my shield (and into a lightning bolt) when he suddenly reached his hand forwards, a ball of fire forming and starting to shoot straight at me. Maybe they weren’t underestimating me as much as I had thought.

I tried to dodge the attack, but the fireball hit me before I could move far enough. My Ion Shield held, absorbing the heat as well as most of the impact, and I quickly focused on getting it back up to full strength… and then I noticed that the fireball had hardly damaged my shield at all.

I ran to the side of the room opposite were Tetra was laying, not wanting to draw further attention to her still form. Another fireball shot out, this time actually blasting me sideways a half dozen steps as it exploded upon impact. More damage this time, but still not as much as I would have imagined from a freaking fireball. I finally had my magnetism ready to go, so I reached out searching for something to anchor myself too.

What stood out the most was obviously the three armored figures, so I decided to just go with it and set myself up between them. I quickly flew off my feet as the force of the magnetic attraction pulled me into the exact center of the three, and then I quickly reversed the polarity with all my strength, sending all three of them flying back towards the opposite walls of the safe room.

Unfortunately, my aim hadn’t been perfect, so I ended up spinning in mid-air and disoriented, falling heavily to the floor on my back. The three of them were struggling to their feet, their armor (or maybe some kind of protective ability) having absorbed most of the impact, and the woman who had struck Tetra reached out and sent a lightning bolt crackling straight at me.

I flinched instinctively, but I had no way to avoid the attack as it struck my Shield… and was promptly absorbed. The energy from the lightning bolt actually made it easier for me to maintain my magnetic fields, and slightly lessened the energy I needed to supply myself. Huh, well that was pretty cool.

I still hadn’t decided if I was going to kill these people or not, but I had definitely chosen to not hold anything back – they had brought this fate upon themselves. I braced myself against the other two soldiers as I reached out for the man who had thrown the fireball at me, my magnetic field picking him up and hurtling him towards me. I quickly set up a move I had practiced dozens of times, using powerful magnetic forces within my Ion Shield itself to lock my body into a rigid immobile object as I slammed the armored man into my own body – or perhaps I should say he slammed into me… and whatever I was using to brace myself for the collision. My Ion Shield would be able to take the impact damage easily, and as long as I was properly braced I wouldn't get thrown backwards or injured.

I only moved back a little bit (though even that much was a bit jarring) as the other two soldiers behind me were pushed stumbling off their feet, the momentum from the collision shared equally between the three of us. The fireball-throwing soldier had wreathed himself in flames just prior to impact, but it didn’t seem to help him that much as he dangled limply in the air before me, his flames now extinguished. I reached out and set up a powerful magnetic field on either side of his helmet, causing it to fold in on his skull as it collapsed inwards. I didn’t really want to kill him, but I wanted to make one hundred percent sure he would be out for the rest of the fight.

The remaining soldier and the woman who had struck Tetra were yelling something, but I wasn’t interested in listening at the moment. I felt a sudden sense of disorientation as the room seemed to spin around me, my stomach lurching as up became down. I looked over at the pair of soldiers as I was struck by lightning bolt after lightning bolt, each one making my magnetic fields a bit stronger as my shield funneled the electricity into something useful.

The other soldier had been bombarding me with a constant stream of fire for the last few seconds, and I was finally starting to see what effect it had on my shield… it was starting to overheat!

There is a common misconception that electricity (and therefore lightning) is hot, but this is simply untrue. Electrons can cause heat when passing through something that tries to resist them (like trees, fences, and people) but if they pass through something that doesn’t resist their flow (like my Ion Shield) they have no effect on its temperature at all.

Fire, on the other hand, is nothing but heat. And from what I could tell, it was starting to slowly heat up and melt the iron dust in my shield, weakening my magnetic fields (liquid iron isn’t magnetic).

I decided to deal with him next, pulling myself towards him feet first, tying his helmet to my boots magnetically. This time the impact was a lot more jarring, but I had my legs and torso (small though they were) to absorb most of the impact, while he just had his head and neck. I reached out and folded his helmet in on itself, ignoring his gurgling scream as I turned to focus on the woman, who had finally smartened up and drawn her sword.

So I tied it to her right foot with all my power, sending it shooting out of her hand and straight through her boot – I think it actually went into the stone floor a little bit, but I wasn’t sure. The whole helmet thing seemed to work wonders, and I was still supremely pissed that she had hit Tetra as hard as she had, so I flew towards her (well, levitated magnetically) and crumpled her helmet around her skull as well.

I was still angry enough that I wanted to go up and do the same to Alder, but I knew I had gotten extremely lucky here. If they hadn’t had armor on, or had been using wooden weapons, this fight might have gone very differently.

So I finally allowed myself to drop to the floor, sweating heavily, and stumbled unsteadily over to the crumpled and unmoving form of Tetra.