Duncan studied him with curious eyes. “Aren’t you tired at least?”
Will shrugged. “I’m not opening my gate—my source—to get the turyn. I absorb it from the environment. It does take some effort, but I don’t get tired according to how much turyn I use. It has more to do with how much focus and concentration it requires.”
“I’m not sure that makes sense,” replied his instructor.
“It’s like the difference between digging a hole with a shovel and reading a book,” said Will. “For most wizards using magic is like physical labor, because they’re using up the turyn that keeps them alive. I’m not doing that. I’m using ambient turyn that I absorb, so for me the fatigue comes mainly from concentration. It’s a purely mental exercise, so I don’t get exhausted as easily and it’s more of a mental fatigue.”
Stephanie broke in, “The important thing is that we know how special he is. Otherwise he’ll be forced to tell us, again and again.” She punctuated her words with a sour grimace of disgust.
Will ignored her, studying the dam with his eyes rather than giving her remark any attention. After a second he remarked, “Knowing that this buttress can’t support any of the load makes me feel nervous.”
The instructor nodded. “That’s a natural reaction, but not to worry, that’s why it’s designed with double the tolerances needed. The buttress on the left and the temporary brace we’ve installed are each capable of handling the load by themselves, just in case either one should fail. We’re perfectly safe until we finish the repair work.”
A sharp noise, a crack that was reminiscent of thunder with a muffled tone, rang out. It was a sound unlike anything Will had ever heard, and it made his heart jump in his chest. Stephanie glanced at him in confusion, but Duncan recognized the sound immediately. “Watch out!” yelled their instructor, leaping forward to grab their wrists as a massive slab of broken concrete fell toward their heads.
It was far too late, however. Will and Stephanie’s reactions were too slow and by the time their brains had registered what was happening, they were on the verge of being flattened into jelly. Will’s point-defense spell snapped into being even before he consciously decided to use it, and the massive block slammed into it and split into several pieces that fell to either side. His shield vanished and reformed twice more in quick succession, shunting the larger fragments away from them. It happened faster than he could think, at a level below conscious thought, just as Arrogan had once told him it would: “Force effects that you can instinctively cast operate at the speed of the soul.”
The instructor and his two students froze in place as the massive fragments settled to the ground in a shower of stone chips and dust. Will was almost as surprised by what had happened as the others were, even though it had been his magic that saved them. Looking up, he saw a long crack growing along the surface of the dam accompanied by more cracking and popping sounds. Smaller pieces of stone continued to fall, and water began to spray from the crack.
Duncan’s mouth fell open. Then he muttered, “We’re dead.”
Stephanie turned to run, but Will caught her wrist. “We can’t outrun it. We’d need an hour’s head start to get somewhere safe. We have to shore up the dam.” Even as he spoke, the buttress to their left shifted sideways as it surrendered under the immense strain. The temporary iron brace was also beginning to bend. It appeared neither of them were operating according to the designer’s expectations.
The sorceress’ face was red as she jerked and tried to pull away, but Will’s grip was like iron. “Let me go, churl! I’m not dying here with you!”
He ignored her as he constructed a different force spell above the palm of his other hand, one meant to conjure a flat, wall-like force effect. Unlike the point-defense spell, he couldn’t cast it reflexively, but it was only third-order, so it only took a few seconds to prepare. Will invested it with power and applied it to the weak portion of the dam above them.
As Will had learned previously, force effects ignored basic physics in several important ways. For one, they ignored things like mass, inertia, and momentum. A force shield couldn’t be moved by any amount of normal matter. Its key limitation lay in the amount of turyn required, for the energy needed increased exponentially as a function of both distance from the caster and the size of the effect being created.
In this case, the wall that Will created was over thirty feet above his head, and it covered a ten by twenty-foot area. Those two factors combined meant that he wouldn’t be able to maintain the spell for more than a minute, even though he had already expanded his outer shell and begun absorbing turyn as quickly as possible. The instructor pointed out that fact almost immediately. “Nice idea, but we can’t keep that up.”
The workers beside the failing metal brace looked at Duncan uncertainly. They were seconds from panic. Will spoke quickly, “I can keep it in place for a minute or two. Stephanie, if you use your elemental to supplement your power, you and I can take turns keeping a force wall in place. The workers can sort out the problem with the iron brace while we do that, right, Instructor?”
Duncan nodded. “We don’t have any other options.”
“I don’t know that spell,” said Stephanie, pulling away. “Let me go!” Will’s hand clamped down harder on her wrist. “You’re hurting me!” she shrieked.
Will found it hard to believe she hadn’t learned one of the most basic spells they had been taught at the beginning of their second year. Nobles! Stupid, lazy… He pushed those thoughts away. They wouldn’t help. Instead he attached a source-link to her with barely a thought and began draining her turyn.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes widening in alarm. “Stop!”
“Draw from your elemental. Together we can hold this,” Will explained.
Stephanie continued to struggle, but her strength faded quickly. She did draw some turyn from her elemental, so she wound up helping him inadvertently. As the seconds ticked by, Will saw Duncan join the laborers and begin working to reinforce the iron brace. From what he could see without joining them, the central beam had started to fold in an unusual manner, though whether that was because of a flaw in the material or unexpectedly high stresses he didn’t know.
The workers wrestled the heavy iron bars into place while Duncan took the unusual step of welding them directly with magic. Will knew it took a lot of turyn to do, and he worried about the cost to his teacher, but it wasn’t as though they had any better options at that point. “How much longer?” yelled Will. Stephanie and her elemental had run dry, and the turyn he was absorbing wouldn’t be enough to last much longer.
“Ten minutes. Can you hold it that long?” called the instructor.
Will nodded, closing his eyes as he released Stephanie’s hand. She slumped to the ground beside him, exhausted but still conscious, barely. She watched him with angry eyes.