And so, the next cycle, Kaleb woke early, keen and excited for what he might find out – how it was that he could defend himself. If it was really true – that Erid didn’t have spikes– then maybe he could perform the kind of manoeuvres that Erid had, and even stand on an equal footing to those with spikes! He jumped out of bed, and tried his best not to dash straight up stairs. Of course, he had to wait until Erid finally joined him and Essan to begin. Essan was wandering around, packing things away. The bar remained closed and empty.

Finally Erid walked in, looking a little worse for wear. Kaleb had gone to bed earlier than the other two, who he had heard drinking late into the night. Essan, however, was moving around lightly, humming to himself, seemingly unaffected.

Kaleb paced nervously while Erid helped himself to breakfast, and then, finally, after seeming to take even longer than he normally did to pour himself a cup of tea, he moved some tables from the centre of the room and gestured for Kaleb to do the same. Then he got Kaleb to sit in a seat, and began to speak.

“Your first lesson in self defence will be how to make sure that no one knows you don’t have spikes. Avoiding conflict is always better than engaging in it.”

“Oh”

“You don’t seem enthused”

“No, I am!”

“Yeah, right. You probably wanna be able to throw some punches, kick people through walls. Too bad! You’re weak, and it’d take a long time for you to get strong enough to fight someone with spikes. So it’s better to avoid altercations in the first place. Of course you can’t guarantee you’ll never be attacked, but even in that case, it’s better if people don’t know you can’t defend yourself.”

“Right.”

“But, in order that you don’t get yourself in over your head, I will show you the distance between us, and also the methods that I use to attack those with spikes, so that you can tell that there is a point to what I’m going to teach you. So then, a demonstration:”

At this, Erid pointed to a teacup still half full of tea that was sitting on a table near him. There was a small tingle of field generation, and the cup was pulled towards him. It began to spin, and the liquid in it spilled out. Kaleb let out a cry: fields usually only operated in attraction or repulsion or the more complex rotational field, but they always did so with regard to the origin point of the field generator, usually a part of their body that they were channeling the field through. This meant that once liquids left a container they were usually impossible to capture again, and even with a rotating field they were usually lost gradually to centripetal forces. At worst, the liquid, which Kaleb could see was still steaming, would end up covering Erid – or himself. But then something incredible happened. The liquid spun itself into a loop. It formed a loop, and then several other streams of droplets, each of them vibrating in the air. The teacup itself was rotating in the middle of what seemed to be a sphere surrounding it. By Kaleb’s understanding of what fields could do… this was impossible.

“What...?!”

“Nah-ah. You tell me, how am I doing this?”

The only way to tell what someone was doing with a field, if you couldn’t see its operations clearly, was to sense it by your own, and so Kaleb reached down and felt the tug and pull on his own field, the passive influence that Erid’s generation was having on his field. He’d felt fields before. He had even felt those fields that people with spikes had generated, but none of them felt like this. This was a supremely delicate application of field generation. There were at least two… no three directions of field rotation being employed at once… but Kaleb couldn’t tell in which direction nor from what origin they were emitted.

“I can’t tell.” he grimaced awkwardly.

“Well, that’s ok. I’m not planning to start you off trying this.” Then, as if Kaleb wasn’t already impressed enough, Erid put the cup back on the table and then put the fluid back inside it. Kaleb felt his mind screaming, but his mouth refused to work. “But this is –in principle– one of the methods by which one can, without spikes, defeat someone with spikes. In the end, spikes allow one to build up a greater charge – hence they are called capacitance spikes– and rods and coils allow for the deployment of highly directed and powerful fields. That is the level where most spiked field generators stop at. The method to defeat someone who has gone in for this easy and rapid power-up is to be able to out-maneuver them. For instance, if they were to use an attractive field, like those men that assaulted you, they would be bracing for the friction or resistance that you would generate as they attracted you… actually how about a practical demonstration? Try and use an attractive field on me.”

Kaleb looked slack jawed.

“Come on!”

Kaleb blinked, and then stood opposite Erid, and then let his meagre field expand within him, and then generated the attractive force, applying it to Erid. Then something unexpected happened– it gave way. Suddenly he found himself on his arse, and Erid was standing over him, a wry grin on his face.

“So what do you think happened?”

Kaleb thought about it for a moment. Just before he fell, he’d felt the tingle of Erid’s field generation. He could tell what this one was doing. It was a repelling field.

“You pushed yourself towards me.”

“Exactly right.”

“That’s so simple though!”

“Yes it is. And devious. But it often works. Sure, there are more complex ways to deal with fields, but at their heart all of them rely on the same basic principle: use people’s own strength against themselves. This is particularly useful for us without spikes, since entering a pissing contest with people with unfair advantages is really not what you want.”

Erid paused for a moment and let Kaleb absorb this.

“The point of my first demonstration with the teacup was to show you… well, less a means to defeat someone, and more an example of the potential of natural field generation. Even if you don’t possess the strength of spikes, you don’t suffer from the curse of easy power– a lack of adaptability. If you can learn to direct your field without the crutch of spikes, rods and coils you can be a far more effective field generator than even the best of those with spikes.”

Kaleb once again found his mouth hanging open. He felt like a world of possibility was suddenly opening up before him.

“But… why do people get spikes?”

Erid laughed.

“Well, have you tried to do the things that I just did? Do you think you could?”

Kaleb shook his head

“It takes years of work and an understanding of the techniques needed to be able to manipulate things at this level. Spikes allow people to do simple things effectively… at least most people. Some go further. Like I said, the strength of the natural field is adaptability. The strength of spikes, though, after their capacitance boost, is easy specialisation. People get sensory arrays, power arrays, medical arrays, all sorts of different fields can be generated, and people can have rods and coils either embedded under their skin or wear them externally to aid them in adapting to different use-cases. From these, they can quickly reach the threshold to make a standing field – a field that can hold things in the air in place. And there are some areas that spikes outdo my control. For instance, sensory, especially medical sensory, field generators have unparalleled abilities in field visualisation– especially body interiors. The boons of speicialised arrays are great, and they are efficient.”

“But–?”

“But they aren’t adaptable. And this is also how you can come up against a field generator, even a whole team of spiked field generators, and overcome them. If they have power, undermine it, if they have intricate control, overpower it. That is the ethos of what I do… well, at least it’s a good place to start looking.”

“Wow”

Erid laughed at Kaleb’s honest expression of awe. Poor kid, he thought, we all start with dreams… before the hard work kicks in.

“But that’s not what you’re learning. At least not yet.” Erid gave a cruel smile. “We’re going to start with camouflage.”