Learning as Dedicated (Closed

[Phelix]

 

OOC: Continuing the historical posts showing Rhys' growth over the months.

 

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Battle Training was not Rhys’ favorite thing, but he was getting better at it. Today, he and his squad were running through the woods to the East of the Tower, and Rhys was struggling to keep pace with the rest of the men. They were younger and had been farmers or soldiers before hand, and now were much fitter than Rhys… he wasn’t pudgy like he had been when he first arrived, but he was nowhere near the condition one needs to be to be called an “active” man.

 

Hidden through the woods were other Dedicated whose sole task was to make sure that none of Rhys’ squad made it to the other side of the woods. They were free to use any weave they could form that would not kill their target. The hidden defenders rarely made mistakes, but sometimes they wove too strongly, or the madness took one, and that ended in a death or two, before an Asha’man could control the situation.

 

From his place at the back of the path, Rhys had a good perspective to watch the weaves being formed by the defenders, attacking his companions, and he was able to lash out with Spirit to slice the weaves, or to block them with sudden walls of stone pulled from the Earth. He might not be the fastest at running, but Rhys was quick and deft with his weaving. He wasn’t the strongest among the Dedicated, but the Asha’man said strength would come with time. Some people did not reach their full potential until they had been channeling for years.

 

He felt, more than saw, the man coming up behind him, and Rhys spun Fire and Air, bending light around his body. Running made it ripple a bit, but it still made him next to invisible in the woods. The other man’s weave came together, and Rhys jumped forward to avoid the wall of fire. He did not stop to see if the man followed. Ahead, he saw a pair of brothers that he loathed. Nineteen years old and full of themselves for having been Raised to Dedicated within two months of their arrival. They were growing quickly, learning fast, and were proud of it. Each of them had woven a pair of shields, splitting their flows to attack multiple opponents, and they each had blocked two squad members from the Source. A third flow, this time of Air, bound their targets in place.

 

Rhys slowed his jog to a quiet walk, avoiding dry branches and leaves, and smiled as he felt the man behind him weaving more saidin, and creating more walls of fire back where Rhys had been before. He apparently though Rhys had gone to ground there and was trying to flush him out. The benefit to Rhys though, was all that saidin made his tiny weave of folded light difficult to notice.

 

Coming up on the brothers, Rhys threw a rock across the field, making a bush rustle on the opposite side. Both of the defenders turned to look, and that was when Rhys struck. He wasn’t powerful enough to shield them while they already held the Power, but he could outsmart them. Two quick weaves made tiny localized earthquakes directly under the brothers, and the waves from the quakes created yet more rippling destruction when they met. Rhys tied them off loosely, wanting them to disperse on their own soon. He ran as he wove, moving to a different place around the meadow. With every pace he ran, he created a new weave to do something distracting coming from the opposite side of the meadow. Thunder claps, waves of air, lines of broken earth, and more. And the brothers kept attacking the woods where the weaves were coming from.

 

Their distractions took focus away from the shields they were holding, and it was enough. Rhys’ squad mates broke free of their shields and joined in the fight against the brothers. Five on two wasn’t always an easy fight. The brothers gave a good fight, but in the end, Rhys’ squad was able to get them bound and shielded, just in time to dodge out of the path of a wall of fire. The Dedicated behind them must really want them to lose.

 

Erman was rubbish weaving most things, but fire based weaves came to him like breathing. He was often tasked with joining in on these battle runs to provide a realistic threat. Sometimes he enjoyed it too much. The squad ran, but a ball of fire knocked Toran to his knees, and an illusion of fire herded Jakko off away from the group, and into a pit. Finally, Rhys, Mikael and Westly were left. Rhys began to hope that they might win this one.

 

And the earth dropped out from beneath their feet, turning from solid ground to thin mud, and then back again, trapping all three of the squad mates.

 

Asha’man Dendric came over to them and tagged all three. “You’ve lost this challenge. Take 20 laps of the Tower, then go on to your next lessons.

 

Groaning, Rhys fought his way free of the earth, and got to his feet, then began running for the perimeter of the Tower’s grounds. He had to finish the 20 laps before his next lesson, so he ran as hard as he could, as fast as he could, and he was still late.

 

He arrived at his objects of the power class fifteen minutes late, sweaty and dirty from his previous work. Asha’man Paulin was not amused and made Rhys explain his failure to the class of six other Dedicated.

 

Once that was done, he joined the class, and tried to catch up. Today, they were learning the use of angreal. These were nowhere near as common for men as they were for women, and even for them they were not common items. But there were enough that a man needed to know what he was looking at when he found one.

 

The class was rather intriguing. The small statue was of a man, kneeling with his sword point in the ground. It allowed a man to draw a good pool of saidin, maybe 20% more than he could normally… and that extra amount was huge. The fight for life, the sweet rot of the taint… everything was bigger, harsher, brighter.

 

Asha’man Paulin had them test their strength, pushing their limits, using the extra strength the angreal provided to go beyond what they could normally do. It was exhilarating. While stretching his ‘muscles’ using the angreal, Rhys could feel a similarity between himself and the object. It was odd. But he wanted to learn more.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Phelix

[Phelix]

 

After Rhys had been in the Black Tower for 9 months, he was assigned to take a class on regional politics. The Asha’man teaching the class was a Cairhienin who had been a nobleman, but had lost his claim to all titles and estates when he began to channel. Asha’man Tromaine was thorough in his lessons, and wanted the best from his students. He saw every subtle twist and thrust used in daes’dae’mar. The Game of Houses was an intricate dance, and Rhys loved to learn the steps. When the class began, Tromaine provided packets of information on a Court of nobles, including High and Low nobility, high servants, foreign nobles and ambassadors, and set them all in a hypothetical nation similar in size and wealth to Andor or Cairhienin.

 

The lessons were sparkling hours of thought and puzzles. The thrust and parry of the Game of Houses was much like the negotiations done by the Merchants of Far Madding, like Rhys’ mother and wife. It shocked Rhys that he was actually good at observing these movements. The women of Far Madding insisted that men were not any good at negotiations, because it required a level head and calm heart. Yet, here he was dismantling the layered reports and hints, making educated guesses and succeeding at it all.

 

Eventually, the lesson changed from a hypothetical nation to real examples from the history of the world’s nations. The other students fell away from the class, not seeing why these lessons made sense. They were weapons. There is no need for a sword to understand why it is being swung, only that it swing and strike true. Seven months into his politics lessons, Tromaine stopped coming. Rhys waited for an hour before going to Tromaine’s home, only to find a pair of Soldiers sweeping it out.

 

An asha’man found Rhys, and explained that Tromaine had drawn too deeply while working on an assignment from the m’hael, and he had died from it. Burnt himself out and his heart stopped from the shock.

 

A few days passed, and Rhys dealt with the grief of losing a kind teacher, when a new Asha’man came to find him. As Tromaine’s final student, Rhys was being assigned to teach a class of Soldiers the basics of global politics. Not the Game of Houses, like Tromaine had taught them, but a quick and efficient lesson on the current politics of the world.

 

Rhys loved it still, and enjoyed sharing that knowledge with the younger men. For several months, he shared his joy of knowledge with the young men, helping brighten their lives, sharpen their minds… and he hoped, show them that they could be weapons while still being curious.

[Phelix]

 

On the last day of his second year at the Black Tower, Rhys was working on his own project. He was close to earning his Dragon Pin, but he wasn’t there yet. At this point, though, he had few ‘classes’ and was now mostly learning on his own.

 

Today, he was working on trying to make a ter’angreal. The asha’man laughed at his continued efforts, but he was sure he could do it. The Black Tower has only had one man who could make these wonders, but perhaps Rhys would be the second. He had with him a small sculpture that he had shaped out of stone himself, using Fire and Earth to make sure that its proportions and angles were perfect. It was only about 9 inches tall, and it had the shape of a man sweeping the floor. The shape just seemed right to Rhys.

 

He was walking out, away from the Tower for this experiment, in case things went wrong. He only wanted to put himself in danger. No Soldiers or Dedicated should die for his curiosity. Two hours of walking found him in the middle of nowhere, in a quiet meadow. He sat down on a large stone, and set the statue on its own stone in front of him.

 

Concentrating on the statue was easy. He could see every bend and curve, every straight edge and every point in his mind’s eye. He had carved it and he knew it to its base. His theory was that to create a ter’angreal, you needed to reach through the object like you would an angreal, and create a “space” within the object where the weaves could rest, ready to be triggered. In his theory, if someone picked it up and seized the Source through it, the One Power would flow into the “space” filling the empty weaves with Power, causing them to come into effect, without requiring the holder to weave them at all.

 

Unfortunately, his theory wasn’t working, or if it was, he couldn’t focus correctly to create the space. He tried everything he could think of. Seizing the Source and then reaching for the space. Reaching through the statue, then seizing the source. Creating the weave he wanted and then laying it into the stone before reaching for the space. Literally carving the weave into the interior of the statue. Creating the weave then copying it in Spirit and laying that into the statue. Doing the same, but with Earth instead of Spirit. He tried with all of his strength, at half power, and with just a whisper of power. He tried it standing and sitting. He tried filling himself with rage. He tried being serene.

 

Holding himself perfectly still, the Power blazing inside him, he thought he saw the space forming in the statue, so he laid the weave into it… nothing happened, but it felt different… so he laid another copy over it, then a third and a fourth. The statue seemed to be vibrating, it was working… something was happening!

 

Then there was heat, pressure, and a bright light.

 

Rhys woke hours later, with the soft patter of rain on his eyelids. The rain moistened his lips, and the blood on his face. He had stone fragments embedded in his flesh, and the statue itself was simply gone. His uniform had neat holes where shards of stone had cut through the black fabric.

 

He limped back to the Tower, taking three hours for the hike, and returned after the middle of the night. In his room, he formed a ball of light, and used a small pair of tongs to pull the shards that he could find. Then he spread an ointment over the cuts. Dedicated were not allowed to receive Healing for mistakes with their weaves. They were, however, allowed to buy herbs and medicine from the wise women of the town.

The next hours before dawn were spent darning the holes in his uniform. If he showed his face wearing a ragged uniform, he’d be stuck on ditch digging for sure.

 

Halfway through darning, he had already begun to think about what he’d done wrong and how he might do it correctly in the future.