Jackson drained off the dregs of Izzy’s beer. “Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”

There was a type of grim acceptance around the table. Each trainee thought about the options and realized that was the best one. Except Marko, “We still get to be murder hobos, right?” Hera bounced a flagon off his head. The ogre scowled and rubbed the bump.

Elyse stood up, “All right. Letss go get trained.” The squad silently filed out of the chow hall after her. We all lined up in the training hall. A few members of the other squads followed us to see what was going on, but mostly, they stayed in the dining area.

Bidlack was talking to Instructor Nills and looked up. Elyse hissed, “Drill Ssergeant. Third Ssquad reporting for training.” A ghost of a smile appeared and vanished on his face.

“Very well, trainees. Let’s get you into unarmed combat.” He boomed. Instructor Nills was our trainer for unarmed combat. We paired up me with the female gold dwarf Hera716. The people that used their gamer tags as names weirded me out, but to each their own. She had a mean right cross and all dwarves had a low center of gravity, so we were hard to flip.

Nills demonstrated an ankle toss to use against dwarves. He placed his left foot on the outside of mine, then kicked my other ankle with his right. Once I was teetering, he flipped me to the ground. It was essentially a trip, but worked to get us on our backs. I bowed and tried it on Hera. This was going to take some practice to get right.

It’s crazy that the martial arts style we had to learn developed different moves for different opponents. That trip Nills taught me to use against dwarves was useless against Sauroids. Both the midniss and halnaak were just too flexible to go down to an ankle trip. They were both light enough that more traditional tosses would work against them. A hip toss for the halnaak and a shoulder toss for the midniss. Shoulder because they were so tall.

I could toss elves around all day. They were so light they felt like nothing in my hands. The style Nills taught them was much more about movement, which made sense. Falaise worked with the elves on the style she called Leaf Dancer.

Other trainees gradually filtered into the room. Before I knew it, the whole platoon was doing kicks and punches. “Drill Sergeant, is the point of this to teach us actual martial art, or is it a basis for what we’ll learn in the future?”

“It’s a basis.” Bidlack confirmed. “Once you have a good sturdy base, everything you learn will be built on that. You’re going to be a mage, right?” I nodded. “Take your stance.”

I took a ready position. For the dwarven martial art, which I’d learned was named Volcano Strider, the basic stance was feet about shoulder width apart. For a dwarf this was a very wide position with very short legs. It was almost like a horse stance to human martial artists. Knees slightly bent, left arm down in front of the torso and right arm at the waist.

“Cast a spell, it doesn’t matter which one.” Drill Sergeant told me. Since I’d already used both Snowball spells I’d memorized, I could select between one Candleflame or two Summon Lesser Beasts. I began the chant of the summons.

Drill Sergeant punched me in the face. I stopped chanting in surprise. “Don’t stop, keep up your casting.” Thankfully, I wasn’t far enough into the casting for the interruption to remove the spell from memory. I wiped my bloody nosed and began the chant again.

Drill Sergeant hit me on the left cheekbone. A dwarven head was mostly good, hard bone, but that hurt. It interrupted the chant, making me stop partway through. “Come on, trainee. We’re not teaching you patty cake here. Block, that’s what your left arm is for.”

Ah, he’s trying to teach me to multi-task. Again, I hadn’t gotten far enough into the chant to take it from memory, so I tried again. My gemstone eyes fastened on the Drill Sergeant. Dwarves don’t have the traditional iris. Our eyes are solid color and slightly translucent. When the trainees have talked we’ve figured that’s how we have darkvision and no one else does. It’s an odd effect but you can tell where we are looking and I was staring hard at Drill Sergeant.

I started chanting. He punched and I did a drum style block with my left forearm. He kicked at me and I counterstruck his leg with my right hand. I grinned at him as a horned rabbit with one black ear appeared behind him.

Concentration skill check successful.

He did a slow clap. “Trainees, attention please. Mike just learned how to cast defensively. You magicians might want to learn that. It’s important.” I grinned ear to ear.

Instructor Falaise walked over to me. She showed her gentle smile. “Show me.” And assumed the basic stance of Leaf Dancer, which had her balanced on one foot, the other knee forward, heel on knee. Her hands were both held up at an angle, left hand forward and right hand extending directly out from the shoulder. Her hands were open. It made sense her hands were up since as a Sea Elf everyone except a gnome was taller than her.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I assumed the base stance of the Volcano Strider style. Beginning to chant, she kicked me in the face. I didn’t even see it coming. One moment I’m going through the nonsense words of the spell and the next her size zero moccasin is upside my head.

I was far enough into it this time that it took the spell from memory. I scowled. Her eyes danced but she fought a smile. “Sorry, I’ll go slower next time.”

Charity from a 70 pound elf was galling. I took a deep breath. That’s where I was in life. Embrace it and learn from it.

I resumed the Volcano stance. She took up her leaf dancer stance. The elven style was based around quick strikes and a flowing defense. The dwarven style was solid defense and devastating hits, lots of direct stuff and not much about deception.

I started chanting again, concentration on blocking her hits. She moved towards me and I lunged, trying a drum block again. It was a feint and her other hand flicked my ear.

We did this several times and came up with the same result each time. I shook my head, wire beard rattling a bit. “You’re too advanced a practitioner. I’m just learning and every time I improve, you just ramp up the difficulty.”

“That’s true.” She agreed and dropped the stance, standing normally. “It’s also how you’ll improve. There’s little point in sending you up against those you are ahead of.”

“Building confidence?” I pointed out.

She laughed, that liquid silver trill. “Confidence comes from doing things that are hard. The false bravado that comes from defeating inferiors is just pride. Let’s go again.”

The sea elf kicked me again. She was so fast I could barely see her foot move. This continued all day. We’d work with another of the casters so they could learn casting defensively, then she’d return to me. Ugh. By the time I crashed into my bunk, I felt like I’d been beaten by very tiny baseball bats all over my face and torso.

I was laying on my pile of bricks as Jackson and Izzy lay down on theirs. Izzy had been one of the people training in the new casting technique. We both lay there, staring off into space. Muscles hurt in places I hadn’t realized I had muscles.

“That was a great workout.” Jackson said, sitting on his bunk. I moaned in response. “Ha, you casters are soft. We had a great base building workout.” I moaned again. The human laughed.

“You mock my pain?” I asked, without turning to face him. I heard him snort.

After a few minutes he softly asked, “Do y’all think Niobe made it?”

I sat up, suppressing a groan. “Man, I hope so.”

“It’s weird isn’t it? I mean, nobody has said anything. No one has mentioned her absence at all.” Jackson said with a serious tone. “I mean, we do those accountability formations. That’s what those are for, right? Making sure we’re accountable for everyone in the platoon.”

I shrugged, “I don’t know. If I’d been putting money on it, I would have said they’d have caught her by now. Maybe she did escape.”

“Can you imagine?” Izzy asked. “She’s out there all alone. Does she speak the language? I can’t believe everyone speaks English. Does she know how to hunt for food? I mean, it’s winter. Is there anything to hunt?” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“Yeah, that’s likely to be tough.” I agreed.

“Tough?” Jackson’s eyebrows were raised. “Its likely to be impossible. I just can’t imagine being on the run in a different world. It isn’t like you can just hit the exit and jump onto the interstate. Is this queen lady putting out wanted signs? Are guards looking for her? Is there a bounty? In fantasy movies, there are always bounty hunters.”

“I wonder if that bounty hunter thing is real? I mean, can anyone put a bounty on anybody? Is there a guild like in Star Wars? Is there an approval authority of some kind?” Izzy asked.

“I have the feeling anyone can do it.” I shrugged. “I suspect this society is sort of a golden rule type of thing.”

“Golden Rule?” Jackson asked. “Do unto others as ye would have done unto you?” He quoted.

“Nah, man.” I shook my head. “He who has the gold makes the rules. I mean, we got kidnapped into another world by someone with money.”

We talked about it for a while longer. Really, it was the main topic of conversation until light’s out. We snuffed our lamp and laid down. Now that Jackson had put it in my head, I couldn’t help but imagine Niobe out there all alone. Maybe hungry, maybe cold. I pulled my blanket up over me. It wasn’t much but I’m glad I bought it and my bedroll. They made the bunk just a shade softer and so much warmer. I finally drifted off to sleep.

Morning came as it always did. Drill Sergeant beat the doorframe with his swagger stick. I was just glad this world hadn’t invented metal trashcans. No doubt he’d be whaling on one of those as our alarm clock.

We fell out into the hallway. Everyone was pulling on their training robes and wiping sleep out of their eyes. Like always, Jackson and I lined up on the right side of the door and Izzy took the left. It looked like the Drill Sergeant chuckled when he looked at Izzy. That was weird and couldn’t be good.

We formed up by squads. I was right behind Elyse and we marched through the training room down the hall and onto the parade ground. We were lining up in our position when I heard a gasp behind me. I looked back at Izzy. She pointed to the side.

Niobe was there. The cat woman was tied to a post against the wall. A guard stood on either side of her. Someone had beaten her within an inch of her life.

I started looking around. All the castle guards were lining the parade ground. Dr. Mingelt was standing on his podium. Instructor Stethyr was to the gnome’s right, standing at Parade Rest. This couldn’t be good. I made eye contact with Jackson. He grimaced.

Drill Sergeant stood to the front of the formation. “The platoon will assemble for punishment detail.” He boomed.