It was now Tenebrisday. I was looking forward to my mom’s call. I had some questions for her, not to mention the group did as well. I suppose I could have called her earlier, but I knew she was busy and well, so was I. I wish we’d set a time up, but I figured she’d probably contact me either in the late afternoon or evening.

We did our martial arts practice, formations, archery and, of course, started the day with yoga. Nothing exciting happened during our practice. We got a little more limber, a little more lethal, a little better at archery and, of course, our formations got a little better. We extended the formation battle buddy concept. Strange how the gender roles came into play. I was right tank, Jake became left tank, Big Mike was center tank. All of the guys on the front line.

It doesn’t matter what the reality is, only our perception of it. Despite the fact that Janet and Tanya were both stronger, Jake wound up as tank and we were all Ok with that. I was a little worried about it but didn’t know how to bring it up. How do you suggest that someone might be suicidal and the front line might not be the place for them? I resolved to watch him. What else could I do?

eGirl moved in next to Tanya, pushing Baila deeper into the center, but Miranda moved to the right outside, so she could float and backstab. Both moves tucked the little ones in deeper to the formation. Formations practice went on for a couple of hours. None of us wanted to go into combat not knowing what we could expect from the person next to us. Big Mike gave us a talk about attacking into an ambush. We talked about retreating. Advancing. About target selection, about knowing when to attack. The little ones were paired up. Baila with Consuelo, Amada with Janet. Amada was turned loose a little, allowed to make her own decisions. She was to follow Janet's lead unless Janet was healing. We also talked about attacking first and fast. If the rats are dead, it doesn’t matter who they planned on attacking, well, ‘cause their dead.

We finished up at around 10 and broke up to let us work on our spells individually. The day shift watch crew took over. eGirl, Miranda, then Jake. Jake in the meantime, created some steps using the Create Block spell to allow us to see over and walk on the roof. The roofs were sturdy enough to walk on, but kind of echoey down inside the house, so it was a little disturbing to have someone walk on your roof. Kind of like apartment living with a big guy in the apartment above you.

After about an hour and a quarter, I finally reached the peak of Peak. I threw the skill point at it and I was suddenly Iron 7. Sweet! Wahoo! It made me feel good. It was the first time that I’d advanced rank in anything to Iron through my own efforts post-Event. Not to mention, 8 + 25 Force Bolts. I may only have one punch, but it’s a pretty good punch, 224 points of damage on average. Take that Giant Vulture!

Then I switched to Shield and started grinding the spell. It was kind of funny how as I cast each Shield spell, the glow of the protection grew. By the time I had to break for my first meditation session, I was surrounded by a bright, yellow-glow from all of the repeated casts of the shield spell. I looked like a human-sized incandescent bulb, I’m pretty sure. On the plus side, I could withstand about 180 points of damage when I spent half my mana on the spell. It turns out that the Shield spell stacks! On the minus side, since the spell glowed you could pick out the stronger mages by the brightness of their glow. Let’s see, who should I attack? Oh, yeah, let’s attack the bright glowing one over there. He looks dangerous. Oh well, I was supposedly a tank. It’ll keep them from attacking the squishies. After a couple of hours, I was at bronze 6, at five hours I’d moved to Bronze 7. I threw in the six skill points and I was sitting at Bronze 9. I spent the rest of the time until potions doing the same thing. It was a little mind-numbing to tell you the truth. But how cool is it to be able to walk around in a glowing force field!

At the Potion conclave, I told my story. Tanya was still working on Force Bolt, but she’d got it almost to the peak of Peak. Maybe another hour or two.

Big Mike and Consuelo had both advanced a level from the experience they’d received from grinding Force Bolt. And said they’d keep on. Janet had kept on practicing her Shield spell and had upped it two levels to Bronze 4. eGirl, Miranda had used their time to up Force Bolt, getting it to Bronze 3. The little girls had really been busy and had upped their Force Bolt to Bronze 4.

Jake showed off the stairs that he’d made as well as a railing that he’d put around the roofs to prevent people from falling off. Everybody was pleased, especially the ones that had to do watches, but I could see that everybody was a little puzzled too, wondering why he was doing that when he was supposed to be working on his attack and defense.

I didn’t want him to be put on the defensive, so I made sure that I really praised his work. It took, I guess because everybody relaxed a bit and came up with more ideas for how to make things safer as well as more defensible. I just hoped he’d pull it together. And I resolved to talk with everyone about cutting him some slack. I didn’t know him, but he seemed like he was OK. His idea for the houses may have saved our lives. For that alone, I was willing to grant him the time he needed.