Days passed in a similar routine after the Guild had taken her sword. Faye would wander the town, watching people, learning all she could from people’s conversations, their customs and their opinions. On the surface, the provincial opinions had been tempting Faye into responding rather negatively.
She had found herself sliding back into older reactions.
Back from the time her father had… left.
Realising it, Faye made a conscious effort to steer away from those reactions. The town was on the edge of the world, as Ailith put it. They weren’t used to strange people literally dropping out of nowhere in the middle of the town square.
Her first impression had been rather shit.
Rían hadn’t made it easy, though.
But as she wandered the Lóthaven streets — and people were more familiar with her now they had seen her with Arran, Ailith, and Gavan around town — Faye found herself in what she dared call almost normal routine.
When she returned to the house in the afternoon, she would spend time reading through the primer that Taveon had given her for the alphabet. She used it to immerse herself in something that required absolute focus. It wasn’t always easy to remember the different sounds, even with the adventurers occasionally dropping hints for her.
The system kept getting in the way, translating what she was hearing into English sounds and words. She needed complete focus.
The worst part was that she wanted to completely focus on something else most of the time because people had been assuming Faye was slower than the average person. She had heard them talk about it, sometimes at length before she walked away from those people.
She had quickly realised those people were the same as racists and belligerent arseholes back home. If she ignored them, her day was often brighter.
Regardless, people that were like the adventurers — open and accepting — were everywhere when she looked. There were even some people that would openly scoff at the prejudiced idiots that were speaking too loudly for propriety.
Faye had never really been in the position to learn what people thought of her this way. At home, people would hide their innermost thoughts, especially if they were negative.
Faye hadn’t ever cultivated those people who would be awful to people upfront as friends, anyway.
Faye’s response to those that had tried it in school had been to warn them off.
Loudly.
Of course, she’d backed that up with threat of physical harm and had quickly taught everyone she’d grown up with that she hated certain types of comments.
She restrained from attempting to beat sense into some of the vocal idiots in the town, but it seemed that social opinion was mostly leaning away from that naturally.
Faye carried on taking the adventurers’ house chores upon herself. It wasn’t that the adventurers couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do the cleaning… it’s that she wouldn’t let them. If it ever seemed like they were about to do something, she’d force them out of the house and tell them to go find something more productive and rewarding to do instead.
Of course, they were as bored as she was, so they started making a game of it. Sometimes she would come home from purchasing food to find that one of the three had cleaned her sleeping space… once even after she had already cleaned it out that morning. They had folded the blanket in a very obvious manner and moved it across to rest on the table instead of her sleeping spot.
Because the house had only been bought with the three of them in mind — she assumed they had purchased it and made a mental note to ask them how property worked here sometime — Faye had been sleeping in the living area. It wasn’t uncomfortable, because there was a long couch that was more than big enough to sleep on. She had found enough cushions and blankets to make a comfortable nest each night.
After realising that the team’s punishment was the same as grounding them, no adventuring work and with not many tasks in the town they could perform regularly, Faye had tried to get them to train in the courtyard with her every day.
Arran regularly refused. He was uncharacteristically serious about it, too. Where he often tried to unite the group with humour and good cheer, on this fact he was adamant they would be following the rules to the letter. The Administrator might not have been the worst he’d ever come across, but she was definitely capable of making it so they never left the town on a job again.
He said he couldn’t countenance that.
Neither could Faye. If something permanently bad happened to the three of them, she would probably die of embarrassment — or anger. She hadn’t decided which yet.
However, the monotony of the routine was getting to her. She needed to do something different. It was Arran that gave her the idea.
He had been practising something in the yard, though she didn’t get to see what he’d been doing because he stumbled to a halt the moment she stepped outside.
“Were you seriously practising in secret?” she asked.
“Yes, I have made my feelings on the matter clear,” Arran replied. “Faye, I’m sorry, but there are some things more important than training you. We’re talking about my team’s livelihood. We’d be blacklisted.”
She nodded. “I get it, I do. Now go back to whatever you were doing.”
Arran’s jaw set as he clenched his teeth. “I can’t do that, Faye. If they think I’m training—”
“Alright!” she said, throwing up her hands in defeat. “Fine. Just… Wait a minute. You can’t train me?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying for days… yes.”
She gave him a look that the condescension wasn’t necessary. “You can’t train me. What if I teach you something? It’s better than us both being bored.”
Before he could say no to this as well, she cast around for something to wield. The spindly broomstick the adventurers owned was nearby. The head of the tool didn’t easily come off, so she tried to snap it by stomping on the handle whilst it was braced against the wall of the house.
It didn’t break.
“Well, that was anti-climactic,” she muttered.
She held it up, the bristles of the broom weighting down the end of her make-shift staff. She sighed.
Then jumped as the head of the broom snapped away from the handle with a splintering sound and clattered to the ground.
Arran had cut the broom head from the handle, and she hadn’t even seen him move. She frowned. The system was scary, sometimes.
“Now you have a length of wood. What are you planning on doing with it, exactly?” he asked her. His face held some of the amusement and cheekiness she had come to expect from him.
“This,” she said, holding the make-shift staff to her shoulder to measure it, “is roughly four and a half feet long. Give or take a few inches.”
“What’s an inches? And why are you measuring by feet? Everyone’s feet are different sizes, aren’t they?” he asked.
“That doesn’t matter. I could measure in metres instead if you prefer?”
Arran blinked. “I have no idea what that word was.”
She waved a hand at him. “It literally doesn’t matter. It’s just a unit of measurement. The staff needs to be of a size relative to the person using it, usually, anyway.”
Brandishing the staff, somewhat longer and yet shorter than it should be all at once, she told Arran to watch.
Beginning with a simple kata, a very short series of moves with the staff that she vaguely remembered, Faye repeated the same five steps three times, then handed the staff to Arran.
“Copy.”
Half smiling in amusement, he accepted the broken broom handle. It was much smaller in his hands, coming below his shoulder.
“I don’t think I’ve ever tried learning Broken Handle Style before.”
“Quiet! Don’t call it that,” she said, frowning at him. “It’s got an actual name. I don’t remember it, and I’m pretty sure that practising it with a broken broom handle is offensive in some way to the founders. But it can’t be helped. Now, you try.”
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Shrugging, Arran started the series of moves. He had training with the sword, obviously, which meant that he was able to leverage the wooden shaft and strike with it. Faye had seen newbies flail a staff around as ineffectually as an actual broom handle before.
Arran would be able to hurt someone with the broken handle, it seemed.
But his footwork wasn’t quite right. When he finished the five steps, she told him to do it again, but pause after each one.
He dropped into the first strike, and she tapped his foot.
“Turn this, it should be facing directly forward.”
He glanced down, and she lifted a finger. “Face forward, always look to your enemy.”
He narrowed his eyes but did as she told him.
“Next.”
He stepped forward, striking again.
“Don’t turn your back foot, keep it straight so you don’t twist your body in that movement.”
And through each step, critiquing, instructing. It was gratifying to get back to instruction. She’d been one of the veteran members of her local martial arts group at home and had spent time teaching all kinds of things to newcomers.
At the end of his third repetition of the steps, Faye realised that he was the fastest learner she’d ever been near. He didn’t repeat the same mistakes over and again. She put that down to his previous training.
“Have you practised the staff before?” she asked.
Shaking his head, he passed the handle back to her, the wood warm from his hands. “No, I haven’t. That isn’t what staff users would call a staff, though.” He thought for a moment. “In fact, I’m not sure I’ve heard of anyone using the staff for more than training purposes. Especially one so short.”
Faye shrugged. “Well, this isn’t the right size, like I said. It’s too short for a bo or quarterstaff and too long to be a jo. It’s definitely too long to be a hanbo. In reality, the shorter staff was imagined as an anti-sword weapon.”
She held up a hand to forestall his comments, “I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I only know the basics of the art anyway.”
“Basics or not, there’s no way a short staff can beat a bladed weapon! They are literally designed to cut through defences like this.”
“I said I know what it sounds like, but that’s supposedly the origin of the jo. The longer staff, on the other hand, has the advantage of reach.”
“Which is still inferior to the spear,” he said, with a shrug. “As much as I dislike the spear, personally, I know that as a weapon it has many advantages. Some people pick up the spear and use it competently much quicker than any swordfighter.”
At that moment, Ailith entered the yard. She was drinking something and looked tired. Faye looked up and frowned at the light in the air.
“You’re back early,” she said.
“Yeah, job got done early. Wanted to come straight back. What happened to the broom?”
“Faye decided that she wanted to practise with a stick.”
She rolled her eyes and turned to Ailith. “I was forcing Arran to learn some of a staff art from… well, my home. I was bored.”
Ailith grinned. “Ah, yes, watching Arran work out. Very intriguing.”
Faye felt heat build on the back of her neck. “That is not what I meant.”
“Don’t worry,” Arran interjected. “She’s just jealous you weren’t ogling her.”
Ailith pouted. She downed the rest of the liquid in her cup. “Well, whatever it was I’m sure I can try it.”
Faye nodded. “Why don’t you demonstrate for our newest addition, Arran?” But at Ailith’s wagging eyebrows, she snatched the staff back before he could take it. “Never mind. I will demonstrate.”
He was grinning, and Ailith was laughing, but Faye could only shake her head.
She went through the same five moves she had shown Arran earlier, but this time she added the next set of steps, too. There were a whole set of kata for the staff, but she wouldn’t be able to remember them all. It wasn’t her preferred weapon, after all, and she had only ever dabbled in the art.
“That looks interesting,” Ailith said. She had stopped grinning and was actually watching with interest now. “The staff isn’t dangerous to the wielder, so you can use both ends equally.”
“But it still doesn’t beat a blade,” Arran added. “If I lunge through the guard, I’ll hurt the staff wielder more than they’ll hurt me.”
Ailith nodded. “Of course. Especially with your skills. What might a staff-wielder gain for class skills, though?”
“A staff is often defensive,” Faye said. “In fact, many times people learnt the staff precisely because it wasn’t a sword, or a spear. Arran’s right, most of the time a blade will win against the blunt instrument, but, historically, people were liable to be arrested if they wandered around with a sword—,” Faye pulled a face here, thinking of her own experience, “but a staff? A walking stick? Much harder for authorities to detain you for carrying one.”
“I think she’s on to something there. A staff gives more opportunity for defence, especially if someone ignores the ‘walking stick’ you carry. I can imagine a defender class that uses the reach of the staff as well as the flexible approach to protect allies.”
“How would that beat out a typical guardian?” Arran asked, he had crossed his arms across his chest, frowning at his team’s expert in defence. “I would rather have you with your solid armour-based defence than someone with a stick.”
“You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen anyone use a staff with their class. I’m sure they exist!”
“I’m not sure they do,” Arran retorted. “Why would anyone accept a random stick wielder over a regular guardian?”
“Is there really so much conformity in the classes that people take? How can I tell what class I’ll get?” Faye asked.
The other’s faces immediately dropped into a guarded expression. Faye realised her mistake the moment she saw their reactions.
“Oh, no, come on we were talking about it already… just forget I’m here! I didn’t say anything else,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Faye,” Arran said, shaking his head. “We really shouldn’t. We already said too much! It’s not something we’re used to doing. I’m sorry.”
“Urgh,” she scoffed. “I hate this. Fine. Be that way.”
----------------------------------------
At the evening meal, the three adventurers were quietly stuffing their faces. Faye grinned at them.
“I take it you like them?” she asked.
They each nodded.
She looked down at her own burger — or the closest thing to a burger she had been able to make. The bakers already sold small buns, and though their crusty shell wasn’t quite what she had had in mind they made do.
It turned out that Lóthaven had five butchers, as far as Faye could tell. One of them specialised in a red meat that looked as similar to beef as Faye thought it could get. She had asked him for minced meat. He’d stared at her for a moment, then asked why she’d want it to be ground up like that.
She’d gotten it sliced as thinly as he’d been prepared to make it, instead.
“Originally, I was going to make you real hamburgers,” she told them, around a bite of her own sandwich. “But it turns out I have some culinary techniques to introduce to the town first.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had something like this before,” Arran said. “Normally, we’d have it in a stew or something.”
Faye shrugged. “It’s not perfect, but it works for what I wanted.”
“I don’t even care you spent the rest of the food money for the week on this.”
Faye looked up, Ailith wasn’t looking at her and was enjoying the burger with her eyes closed.
“It wasn’t the whole budget,” she replied. “I would have spent the same on a stew or something.”
“I said I didn’t care, didn’t I?” Ailith said with a grin.
“Where is it that you learnt to cook something like this, Faye?” Arran asked.
“I started cooking at a fairly young age,” she said. “My mum always wanted to show me things. I ended up cooking way more when I left my mum’s house, of course, so that’s where I really experimented with new things.”
Ailith wiped her mouth with a cloth and made an appreciative noise. “That was good. I think we should add those to our rotation.”
“I agree,” Gavan said.
“So you lived alone?” Arran asked. He said it casually, but Faye still heard the light undertone to it.
“Of course.” She nodded. “I left home to study. I had to live with friends for a while, most people do, and then I got my own place.”
“Your parents let you?”
“She didn’t have a choice,” Faye said, taking the final bite of her burger. “You seem to keep forgetting that I’ve told you I’m an adult, and I make my own choices, where I come from.”
At that, the three shared a look. Faye caught it and scowled at them.
“It’s not that we don’t believe you, Faye,” Arran said, carefully. “It’s just that… well, we don’t know anywhere that would allow an unclassed to live alone. Or let you travel.”
Faye let out a breath and bent her head back.
“Ugh, fine, I’ll tell you. This is getting old. I’m not from here. Like, this planet. Taveon called me an otherworlder. I come from a world called Earth, and a place called the United Kingdom.”
The three adventurers had stopped what they were doing. Gavan was still holding his burger though, and he stuffed the last bite in his mouth and slowly chewed on it.
“But…”
Faye interrupted the next question. “On Earth, we don’t have the system, classes, or levels. The reason I’m such a low level is that I literally started my levelling journey when I arrived here, around four or five days before I first met you. I think. So, as a matter of fact I’ve levelled from nothing to level three within that span of time. If I keep going at that rate, I’ll be the same as you all in… well, probably years at this rate, but hopefully much sooner!”
“It makes sense,” Gavan said. He was watching Faye with narrowed eyes, as if he were able to puzzle out the truth of her words by looking. “Of course, otherworlders are so rare that it’s hard to prove. We have nothing to compare against.”
Faye shrugged. “I have nothing to prove to you. It’s true. It’s where I learnt to fight, it’s where I learnt to cook. It’s where I grew up. For over twenty years.”
“Do you think the Administrator knows?” Ailith asked.
Gavan gave Ailith a look, and she grimaced. “Yeah, I know, it was dumb to ask.”
“Actually, I’m not sure the Administrator does know,” Arran interjected. “She would not want Faye outwith the Guild if she knew she was an Outworlder.”
Faye blinked at Arran’s use of a strange word. What was worse, the meaning was immediately supplied by the same translation magic that was always working on her brain — but she wasn’t sure that it had picked a word Faye had ever used in English before. But the others were still talking, so she put thoughts of odd words out of mind for now.
“…the political consequences alone.”
“We have no idea what those would be,” Arran said. “You’re completely guessing.”
“Ack, fine. But I hate not knowing. It isn’t the thing you know that kills you, Arran.”
“It’s the thing in the dark you didn’t know about, I agree.”
“We know one thing,” Gavan said. The others looked at him and he slowly raised a finger to point in Faye’s direction. “We are talking to an Outworlder.”
“Oh, so you believe me, now?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Arran said. “You’re clearly not dense.”
Faye started to scowl, but Arran lifted his hands in a surrender gesture, “I said not dense!”
“The fact that anyone could be thought of as dense because of their level anyway…” she shook her head. “I guess there are worse things.”
“How did you end up here?” Ailith asked.
Faye shrugged. “I have no idea. One moment I was walking to training, and the next I was here.”
They couldn’t understand how she’d just been there one moment and here the next. She couldn’t either.
She tried explaining herself for hours. Late into the night, they talked about the things she had done, not done, felt, seen, heard, and thought.
Gavan was the one leading the questions, much to Faye’s surprise. In the end, he decided that there was no way to understand what had happened to Faye unless he examined the place she’d arrived.
“I have absolutely no clue to the exact location, I’m sorry,” she said, spreading her hands. “I was confused… and being chased by rabid cats.”
“Don’t worry, they can’t have been rabid, you would have already died,” Gavan said. Apparently oblivious to the exaggeration she’d used. “No, you won’t remember yet… but maybe one day we can go and find it.”
Faye smiled at him; it was a nice thought. With some powerful friends and some strength of her own, she wouldn’t need to worry about anything in the area she’d entered this world in.
They whiled away the rest of the night with similar, though lighter, talk.