“Makes sense. Sorry about all this. Um, what about the hundred men you have locked up? People are still worried there.”

Tor shrugged.

“It's only a magic shield made opaque, since I'm not important enough to treat as a real person, how about they figure it out for themselves? That seems just, doesn't it? If my job, my very being, is so useless and unimportant I can be humiliated and nearly killed, mistreated and abused, I'm sure they won't have any problem fixing things for themselves from now on. All they have to do it remind the door where it was. Kind of surprised no one has gotten out yet. I didn't make it insanely hard or anything, it's really simple. Little kids would be out already. Maybe they're mentally handicapped? Only a person like that would be out already too, most likely. Is there more water?”

There was and it was cool. Bless Ursala, she'd brought one of his old mugs with cooling and heating devices built in. He had to drink four more before he felt able to stand. It was dark, but time wise that was all he had. Dark something O'clock.

They probably had until morning to figure it out before the guards would die. Maybe longer, they wouldn't get that hot. The houses weren't designed to work like ovens. They got warm, but it wasn't death temperature. Rolph didn't like that answer, so he went to tell his dad, who told Smythe. That would probably get Smythe to try and kill him. So Tor tried to hit his shield.

Nothing happened. counting what was around his neck he realized it had been taken. So had his weapon. Well, he'd been acting crazy. He didn't remember it all, but enough to guess it involved a lot of falling down and acting stupid. Great, more things to be embarrassed about.

Tor got up and walked back to his trunk, wondering for the first time in his life if magic was just more trouble than it was worth? Every time he made something to help people, or even try to protect himself, it seemed to backfire on him eventually.