Still Adjusting

"What's next, coach?" John sat next to Adelle on a bench off to the courtyard's side, chugging a bottle of water. He was once again surprised at how refreshing simple water could be after some physical exertion. John splashed a bit on his face for good measure and, before he could forget, bent down to Sleight of Hand a second bottle out of the cooler for later. "Do I go up against you now that I pulled off a win, so you can smack me down and keep me humble?"

"Dame Carpenter is not a coach." Adelle frowned. Like John, her breath was heavy and she was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. "She is a knight and your instructor, you should refer to her as such."

"Dame, coach, sir, teach, Erica... whatever is fine." The young woman in question waved off Adelle's concerns. "I'm not even a real knight anyway."

"That is not true." Adelle's cheeks filled with traces of pink. "Only a knight may have a squire, and I have been assigned to you by Lady Brighton, so you must be a knight."

"Fair enough." Erica smiled at her squire's rebuttal. "Either way, this 'knight' doesn't care what you call her."

"I think I prefer you to a regular knight anyway, Erica," John said. He could tell that Adelle wanted to protest, but she kept herself quiet. "I get the feeling that most of them wouldn't be so chill."

Plus you're smokin' hot.

"Flattery will get you nowhere." Erica's stern expression quickly brightened. "But I appreciate it. Now get up, we've got more work to do."

"Aye aye, captain." John saluted, exasperating Adelle further.

"Good. I'm eager to pay John back for the defeat," she said.

"That's going to have to wait, Dell. I got a good sense of where John's at from watching you guys spar, but I need to see how he does against a non-human opponent."

"No Kobolds, please." John winced.

"Again you bring up Kobolds." Adelle shot John a quizzical look. "Do you have some phobia of them? They are not very dangerous creatures."

"They are when you're an idiot and completely unarmed," John replied with a thumbs up. Adelle shook her head as Erica laughed.

"We're fixing both of those problems today," Erica said, "but no, I'm not talking about Kobolds. Give me a minute and I'll get you some proper equipment."

"I told you I already picked up some weapons, didn't I?" John asked, genuinely confused. "Can't I just use them?"

"Oh, you never checked, huh?" the Berserker said. "I hate to break it to you, but that stuff is long go-" Erica's voice fell away as she watched leather armor, boots, and a pair of knives appear on John's person out of thin air. "...What."

"Where did you get all of that?" Adelle asked, nonplussed.

"Oh, right," John said. "I have a, uh, I guess you could call it a pocket dimension? I had this stuff in there the whole time."

"That is not what I mean." Adelle shook her head. "From where did you first acquire these things?"

"I found a spear and some knives, remember?" John held up his bronze dagger to remind the girls. "I got some armor in the Barrier too. It's pretty good. At least I think it's pretty good. Honestly, I have no idea."

"I called you lucky before, but that was an understatement," Adelle said. "Your luck is beyond my grasp of English to express."

"It's just a crappy bronze knife." John's eyebrows furrowed. "It's not even enchanted."

"You don't get it. Hand me that." Erica stepped in and carefully plucked the dagger from John's hand. She tested its weight before using the tip to clean a bit of grime from beneath one of her fingernails. "Seems pretty real to me," she said. "By the way? When you're passing a weapon to someone, do it grip first, like this."

"Gotcha." John nodded and accepted the dagger. "So what's the big deal?"

"The big deal is that stuff from inside Glámsýni til Yggdrasil usually doesn't keep form once you leave."

"Translation?" John looked to Adelle.

"She means that items removed from a Barrier disappear."

"Usually," Erica corrected. "Maybe one in a thousand might have been woven into reality tightly enough to stick around. There's no way of telling what will last, but it happens sometimes."

"Oh." John scratched behind his ear. "In that case, I must be really, really lucky, because, um…" He spread his hands and dumped everything he found inside the Rockscale Valley Barrier. Each stack fell to the ground in neat little piles around his feet, some clattering, some squishing, and some with a simple thud.

"Dude, why are you carrying around chunks of Kobold?" Erica grimaced and nudged a stray, rolling eyeball back into place with her foot.

"It seemed like the right thing to do at the time?" John shrugged. "Honestly, now that I think about it, you're right; this is pretty gross. Sorry."

"Why did you even take the time to… harvest these things in the first place?" Adelle asked with clear disgust on her face.

"I didn't." John knelt and began storing all of his loot back into his inventory. "I just sort of… warped them into my inventory. Er, pocket dimension."

"Okay, dude, I'm going to be real with you," Erica regarded John after he finished, planting a hand on his shoulder. "Don't tell anyone about this," Erica cast a glance at Adelle and added, "except Moira."

"Why?" John asked. "So I can collect lizard scales, who cares?"

"Because it might not just be lizard scales. It could be mammoth tusks, or demon horns, or even dragon hearts. If you actually get to make illusions real and all that wasn't just the fluke of the century, there will be no end of people trying to rope you into being their personal exotic materials farm. You can make a killing on the Abyss Auction by hunting the right things at the right time, so how profitable do you think it would be if someone could generate rare prey at a whim? Few people would pass up the opportunity to recruit you. Some of them might ask nicely- most won't."

"Oh." John gulped. He didn't need to know what the Abyss Auction was to realize the gravity of the situation. As much as his thoughts had wanted to drift towards seeking out rare enemies for their riches, 'Rule Number One' was too fresh in his mind to allow it. Any visions of holding aloft the heart of a slain dragon were swiftly replaced by three more of the many sudden and painful ways one could kill him.

"It might be smart to speak with one of the librarians," Adelle said. "If anyone can help you understand, it is them."

"Librarians?" Erica quirked a brow. John felt some comfort in the fact that he wasn't the only one in the dark for once.

"Oh, hmm…" Adelle trailed off and touched a finger to her lips. "Maybe I am using the wrong word. They are the people who protect the books and collect information. We have them in Germany, I had assumed you have them here in America."

"The Archivists," Erica snapped her fingers, "the magical nerds. We have those too, don't worry." John initially tensed at her use of the word 'nerd', but the small smile on her face and the way in which she said it were both proof that she meant nothing by it. "It could be a good idea, but honestly, I'm not qualified to make any decisions about magical theory or arcane studies; I'm just the girl who hits stuff with a big axe. It's your call, dude."

"I'll, uh, keep that in mind, thanks," John said. It wasn't very high on his list of priorities, not after Erica's warning. "Maybe after training, if I'm allowed. Actually, are we still training or did I just derail the schedule?"

"Oh, we're still training alright, this just means I get to be a little harder on you." Erica shot John a sidelong smirk as she walked away. "Don't think I didn't notice that other dagger you have there. Anyone could tell that it's enchanted."

John held up Black Claw and focused on its viciously curved inner edge. He was too embarrassed to tell Erica that the enchantment wouldn't help him any in a fight, considering what it was.

"Okay, but where are you going?" he asked.

"To get you some more armor," Erica replied with a wave. "You look ridiculous."

John looked down at himself, once again wearing leather armor over his long-sleeved button down. Unlike before, his trousers were tucked into the boots he had earned earlier in the day, and he realized for the first time that a pair of sheathes that matched the daggers in his hands had attached themselves to his belt.

"She's right." Adelle offered John a look that mixed sympathy and amusement.

"Ugh."

Some time later, Erica was busy lacing up a leather bracer on John's right arm. She had returned with a small pile of cloth and leather, as well as what might as well have been a Chaos Emerald, which she had set aside and said nothing of. John's school clothes had been replaced by a dark grey, quilted coat with long sleeves that fit snugly beneath his existing armor. Erica had also brought a set of leather pants that reminded John of the protective sort he'd sometimes see on bikers, which John was not sure how he'd put on privately in the center of an open courtyard.

"Does armoring up really take this long every single time?" John asked. Erica tied off the first bracer and nodded.

"This is nothing," she said. "You wouldn't believe how many straps are involved when putting on a set of full plate. It's part of why I don't wear much armor myself; danger doesn't wait for you to strap in, so I just got used to going without it."

"It is helpful to have armor that performs most of the work for you." Adelle smiled and rapped her chestplate with her fist. "It is an expensive but useful enchantment."

"Wait," John smacked his forehead as he remembered, "I'm an idiot. Give me that."

John snatched the matching bracer from Erica's hand and slipped it into his inventory. It appeared on his left forearm a moment later as he equipped it, perfectly fit. He stepped over and did the same with the pants. They were heavy, but less restrictive than he had expected.

"Dude, that's cheating," Erica griped. Her jaw fell in annoyed disbelief.

"Isn't all magic just cheating physics?" John shrugged, grinning.

"Fair point," Erica admitted. "Now get in the circle and see if you can cheat your way out of this. You too, Dell."

Erica retrieved the gemstone while her students followed orders. Orange runes lit up on its many facets, changing as she fiddled with it, almost like an uneven rubix cube. She made it to the very center of the circle by the time she was done and dropped it unceremoniously to the ground. The glowing stopped as a heavy boot stomped it into the dirt.

"Two rules," she said, holding up fingers and stepping back. "One, stay in the circle. Two, you both lose if one of you gets knocked out. Have fun!"

"Like, 'knocked out' knocked out, or just out of the circle?" John asked. Erica replied with a coy shrug and the ground beneath them began to rumble.

"You should stay behind me, I think," said Adelle. She reached out her hand and manifested an ornate longsword from nowhere. It wasn't the same as the simple apparition of John moving things in and out of his inventory, however. The blade emerged from air that seemed to be made of spinning shards of reflective glass, curiously similar to the way the world fell apart whenever John exited a barrier. The effect began at her hand and traveled outward until the blade was revealed in full, then disappeared. It was a double-edged sword and a little thinner than the replicas they had been using against each other. A rose was etched into the metal at the base, and vines trailed about a third of the way up the blade in twists and curls along the outer edges of the fuller.

"Noted, but I think if I do that Erica will just make us fight whatever this is again," John replied. He took his eyes off Adelle's sword when the rumbling calmed and a mount of dirt began to swell up and around the stone in the center. "Speaking of, here comes trouble."

The pile of dirt continued to grow in both height and width over the next few seconds. Its form began to change once it reached about three feet in height, growing unevenly. Within moments a vaguely human shape was evident in the mass, albeit far too large, with arms far too long. It stopped at roughly twelve feet tall, and a moment passed in silent stillness before a burst cast the excess material off, as if someone had detonated a firecracker in a dirt clod. What was left was a semi-glossy, humanoid construction of dirt, clay, and stone. It was bulky, each hand easily large enough to grasp John around the waist, and it looked strong enough to do so with little effort. It was a little unsettling to behold, but the worst of it was the head. There, a porcelain mask had formed to serve as a face, sculpted and painted into an unmoving rictus grin. John took a step back as the head swiveled in his direction.

-
Earth Golem
Level 8 Guardian
A construct designed for harsh manual labor and physical durability. This particular model was among the last of its kind before purely arcane golem development halted in favor of magitechnological advances. Still, its efficiency, ease of use, and simple design have given it an enduring popularity.
-

"Has anyone told you that this thing is absolutely horrifying!?" John shouted, eyes locked onto the mask of madness staring at him.

"Yes." Erica flashed a toothy grin. "Several times."

"You get used to it," Adelle sighed.

The conversation ended as the golem took its first, lumbering step forward and raised one of its massive arms high. Blood rushed from John's face as the shadow of its fist fell over him. The sheer size of the thing overwhelmed his cognition and had him paralyzed on the spot, mind empty save for one thought.

"Aw, fucknuggets."