“…But I want to learn magic! That’s not fair!”

The voice was female, high-pitched, and whiny. Marie carefully stared at her plate, stirring the gravy around with her fork as she tried to ignore it. This was a losing battle, and she knew it. The teenager had been complaining for fifteen minutes at this point, and Marie had already emptied her bag of tricks for anything that might allow her to eat her lunch in peace.

“Muffin, you knew before we came to these lands that no one had ever learned magic that wasn’t a local. It’s just not possible, but if you keep up with your dagger practicing you will soon be able to go out adventuring…” The man had already been revealed as the whiner’s father by earlier conversation, and he was completely wrapped around the teenager’s finger. He had spent the last little while explaining the same thing over and over, and Marie was tired of it. What a waste of money to bring her here.

Every person who wanted to cross the Portal had to sit through seminars and training simulators, and a number of other measures. It was carefully pointed out that although ‘magic’ existed on this side of the Portal, no one from Earth had ever learned any. In fact, neither Portal Adventures LLC or any of the people who had ever come here had any idea how you gained the ability to practice it. Magic books had been acquired by Adventurers but there was a missing step; the power that activated the spells, and the locals weren’t talking.

If I could learn magic I would have chosen that too, little bitch. I know how much it cost to get you here, and supplied, and that money could have been better spent on any number of things. How you got here without understanding even the basics of this side of the Portal I don’t know. It’s lucky your implant keeps you from directly saying something stupid or everyone would know you are a Traveler, not that this Inn isn’t filled with us. I can’t say that I loved having to get my hands dirty with that goblin, or that I haven’t struggled with the ethics of it for a few days, but this trek is so real compared to the life I left that there is no chance I would regret coming.

“So, I’ll be the first! Even better! Find me a teacher, daddy! I don’t care how much it costs!”

Marie’s knife made a scratching sound against her porcelain plate as she roughly cut her steak. The grating was almost soothing to her brain at the moment.

“It’s not a matter of money, Kitten…”

Marie stood up so quickly the bench she was sitting on toppled backwards. She snatched up her plate and headed towards the Inn’s front door. Garret threw her a raised eyebrow from his post behind the bar, but she just looked at him resolutely and pushed the door open. She walked over to a tree nearby and sat down, leaning back against the trunk with her plate in her lap.

“That’s better…”

She took a deep breath, the fresh air here still amazed the part of her that had spent its whole life in smog-filled cities. The steak tasted well, especially with the gravy she dragged it through, and without the endless blather of the over-privileged, under-intelligent girl this was turning back in to a decent meal.

The town square was in front of the Inn, with a well in the center of it. On the other side was the Adventurer’s Guild, which was run by Portal Adventures LLC and existed to provide low-level low-risk tasks to those Travelers not brave enough, or capable enough to go out and find their own path.

In a way, the whole of Bucks County was like that as Count Pieter allowed small groups of monstrous creatures to exist within its bounds as a sort of theme park for Travelers. It made Marie shake her head a little in derision at the people who would spend millions of dollars to come here, not knowing how long they would be gone from Earth, and risking their lives only to wimp out once they got here.

Not that I can really talk, since all I have done so far is to take the local equivalent of a guided safari. That will change though, once I get a little more experience under my belt I will leave Bucks County. The rest of the Wyldra Kingdom is different than here, a little more rough around the edges, and without any employees of Portal Adventures LLC looking out for you. And even farther out there is the Ancient Forest Marshallate, home of the elves. Beyond that? Who Knows! Soon…

Finishing her lunch, Marie took the plate back inside to a counter near the kitchen entrance, and she couldn’t help but notice the father and daughter duo had continued their loud conversation even up until this point. With a shake of her head, Marie headed up to her room to catch an after-meal nap and plan out her next few steps.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

***

The fighting academy in the town of Arles was a place adventurers gathered to hone their combat abilities, learn new moves, and check out the competition. It was another facility built by Portal Adventures LLC, and the style was very familiar to anyone who had trained in a dojo back on Earth with the noticeable absence of mirrors. Right now Marie was watching a pair of men spar with wooden weapons, trying to see if there was anything new to pick up in the strikes.

It’s one thing to train back home, but even my teachers that had experience over here were woefully out of date. New techniques that actually work are formed where the battles are happening, which is over here where life-or-death hangs on every strike. I trained in Judo, BJJ, Boxing, and Western Martial Arts for the Florentine fighting with shortsword and dagger, all of which meant that I didn’t die to my first goblin. I need to take all those techniques and turn them into actions which happen without conscious thought or some errant monster will get me with a pigsticker.

The men fighting skillfully pushed each other’s defenses, striking and dodging, parrying and disengaging until one of them overcommitted and ended up falling over after getting pushed. As he fell to his knees and then forward, the other fighter brought his wooden sword down hard, stopping just before smacking in to the back of his opponent’s neck. A middle-aged man with a long brown beard that spilled down his chest stepped away from the wall he was leaning against and in to the middle of the fighting floor.

“Hold! That’s the match right there. Did you all see? Both of these guys are good, really good, but one mistake and one of them would be dead out in the field. Always leave yourself an avenue of retreat, avoid overcommitting because the one time it doesn’t work will be your last.”

Marie found herself nodding along with the other gathered fighters around the room. She had paid a few silvers to join this particular class because she had asked around and they had told her Bjorn was the man in Arles with the most practical experience out in the field who taught publicly. Anyone could join his open sessions, and if he thought you could go farther he would take you on as a student, for a price.

Marie joined the others moving on to the floor, Bjorn was assigning pairs to do a little light sparring so he could evaluate where everyone was skill-wise. Marie was dressed in a flowing linen shirt, and her leather pants along with some calf-length boots, and she was carrying a wooden shortsword and dagger. Bjorn took a look at her, and at first it was starting to feel like she was being appraised like a piece of meat but then she noticed his eyes were roaming her extremities and weapons rather than the spots lechers usually focused on.

“Look, Miss…” He seemed halfway hesitant to say something.

“Marie.” Her long-fingered hands gripped her chosen weapons tightly.

“Miss Marie, I really think you should give up on the Florentine style. It’s fancy, it has its points, it looks cool on stage, and it’s very impractical in a land where you might have to end up fighting in violent scrums on a semi-regular basis.”

A gentle smile was hiding behind his beard, Marie could see.

“I’ve spent quite a long time training in it. I don’t want to use a polearm or ranged weapon, I like swordfighting.” Her voice was a little clipped, and indignant.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t swordfight, but I think you’d do a lot better in practical fights if you fight single-sword with a longsword you can use one or two-handed. A dagger is always useful as a backup or in very tight circumstances, but it’s just going to get blasted aside by the first guy you come up against who has a greatsword.” He held up a pair of great bear-paw hands as if he thought she was going to strike out at him, but his voice had a slightly amused tone.

“How come no one ever brought this up before?” Marie tried to keep her voice from raising as frustration started to fill her mind.

“I’m sure some of your trainers have hinted at it, but you were also probably paying them a mint and they didn’t want to lose that. I think you’re in to me about two silvers so far so I don’t have much on the line, and I like to see people live a lot more than I like money. It’s part of being here in the flesh, it’s all just so much more real.” Bjorn’s thick fingers stroked through his wild, brown beard habitually.

“I see…” Marie’s mind raced back to all the times any of her teachers might have intimated that her choice of weapon was wrong, because people telling her what they thought she wanted to hear was one of the primary reasons she had come through the Portal.

“Look, if you take up using a longsword it’s not like you lose all you have learned so far, you just change some of it. You can always change back if it proves completely unusable, but I am willing to take you on privately and make it as painless as possible if you agree.” Bjorn looked obviously at some wooden longswords hanging on pegs on the wall.

“And if I don’t?” Marie felt herself pushing back as she often did against things she felt she was being forced in to.

“Then I’ve done my part, and told you what I think. Your blood won’t be on my hands, or my conscience.” The massive man shrugged his titanic shoulders as if to say that it would be not be something that kept him up at night.

With a sigh, Marie nodded agreement to his suggestion, and laid her wooden weapons down on the floor by the wall. She took a longsword off the pegs, looking back at Bjorn to make sure he was okay with that before returning to the fighting floor.

This is why I came to the fighting academy, isn’t it? I wanted the advice of people who have the most practical, current knowledge about what will be effective here. If I have gone down the wrong path, I can change that because I know that my ego won’t stop a single blow from an enemy’s weapon. Yeah, I came here to escape from a life I didn’t enjoy on Earth, but I still want to keep living and be able to return. Remember your goal, Marie; if your life does not fit your person, come here and make yourself a person who can triumph over that life.