The large man drank dipperfuls of water, one after the other. Since sweat was glistening on his skin, even in the dry heat, Tor guessed it was warranted. He was just glad that those three monsters weren't going to be coming after him like that any time soon. They stood drinking their own water, carefully not looking at Tor. That was fair. The combat students, even the lower level ones kind of thought of him as a joke, and everything considered, he probably was in their world. Too small to even be an interesting training partner, not a good enough fighter to challenge even the second year students most of the time, and right now no fun to even chase around trying to hit with a practice sword. “Hobble away!” wasn't a very good battle cry at all.

Unless he could incapacitate them with laughter?

Tor ignored them back for the moment, he'd come for a reason after all. Still, he couldn't just ignore the question asked either, not politely, so he tried to give a thumbnail sketch of the situation.

“Um, no, not a dare or anything. There were some kids that fell into an abandoned cesspit that had opened up. Dried and collapsed under its own weight. Everyone else was too big to reach them, so, you know, I climbed down and got them. It collapsed on us, so we had to be pulled out by the rope tied around my ankle, which given everything, broke. Anyway…” He took another deep breath, ready to go into the formal speech he'd practiced.

Kolb stopped drinking and stared at him.

“Did you… save the children?” The large man looked worried suddenly, and all the combat students stopped looking away and stepped closer to him, leaving him feeling a little surrounded.

“Um, yeah, they're fine, I got a shield on the boy, and when I saw the little girl I got her mine before the whole thing fell in on her. Then we got her out. I, um, used direct effect to uncover her. It was… kind of a combat rage thing…” Everyone stared at him for a few seconds, but no one questioned him on it.