The next day he got up in the false dawn so he could leave early in the morning to make his way to the main hall. It was several miles away and he was supposed to be there right after sunrise. Washing his face in a bucket of water, he found himself wishing for some toothpaste and brush. Apparently they didn’t have anything like that here. While he wasn’t worried too much about 5 months without a toothbrush, he was worried what he’d do if it was for an extended period of time. He didn’t want to go back to earth with a mouth of rotten teeth. While pondering it, he realized Verna had a full mouth of white teeth. All the kindred do. He’d have to talk to her about their dental hygiene techniques.

After quickly washing, he examined his beard. It itched when it was growing all those months ago. But he simply didn’t have a blade worth speaking about to keep his face clean shaven. The most he’d trust a blade was his hunting knife, and that was for a beard about this length. He thought he’d hate it, and for a while he did. It itched horribly. It was brutally tough to keep clean and neat too. But after a couple of months he was used to its maintenance. It didn’t need a cut yet. The hair on his head was growing unreserved. Now falling down to the middle of his back. He wore it long back home mostly because he was a huge fan of metal and rock music. That and it was different. Like all teens he liked being different. Growing up everyone was wearing skinny jeans with Justin Bieber cuts. He was wearing flannel and baggy jeans with long hair. He figured it was due to the influence of his uncles who were all huge fans of grunge music. He grew up on grunge. He remembered watching YouTube for Pearl Jam concerts. Music was definitely something he missed about home.

He dressed in the new school uniform which was provided to him. There were white pants and a long black shirt that was almost long enough to be called a robe and cloak. The ensemble looked vaguely like what those practitioners of Tai Chi wore back on Earth, only with an open collar instead of a high one. It was very baggy and loose, with buttons up the front. The shoes were basically slippers, though they had an ankle wrap to them that looked like it went over the pants. Finally, he grabbed the sword he won from Varngus. Varngus’s sword was a long sword, and was worn at the waist, after buckling it on. The uniform also came with a black hooded cloak, which made sense, it seemed like a fairly poor outfit to wear if the weather turned badly. He grabbed the cloak, tossed it over his shoulder and resolved to make the journey to lessons part of his daily exercises, started hustling down the stairs.

Sometime later he shot out of the main keep and maintaining a steady pace jogged the several miles to the main hall, passing a number of other barrack halls and assembly halls, winding around something that looked like an arena or perhaps an open air amphitheater? Either way it was nowhere near on the scale of what the romans might have built, so he wasn’t sure if it was for games or plays.

With the rising sun rising in the west he was able to finally place a name on the beaches, the black sand beach would be the west beach, the white sand beach was the east. The island seemed to run almost north-south. Though he was applying his own understanding of magnetism to directions. These people didn’t seem to know what magnets were. They had a north-south-east-west, direction on their maps, though the “north” was judged based on stars in the sky, east and west by the path of the sun. So it was entirely possible magnetic north did not match their stellar north. For all he knew he could be in the southern hemisphere, and what they thought was north was really magnetic south, and the sun was really rising in the east, not the west. Either way per the natives, the sun rose in the west. So he stopped worrying about it.

Eventually he found himself entering the hall he was directed to before anyone else got there. No, that was wrong, two people were already here. He did a double take when he recognised who it was. Verna and Sam were both in the hall looking clean and relaxed. He stared stupefied for a moment, then he looked at Verna narrowing his eyes.

“Out with it. How’d you do it?”

“Do what?” She clearly was going to have fun playing dumb.

“Did you teleport here yourself or is there a teleportation portal somewhere in that room?”

“Oh, you mean how did we get here before you. You do know it’s not polite to expect a woman to expose ALL her secrets correct?” Next to her Sam giggled. Looking at Sam, she was hiding her mouth shyly behind her hand and trying to look like she didn’t just giggle.

Jace pondered the situation for a moment, then decided, ultimately it was a good thing (whatever it was they used), and not to let his irritation with Verna ruin the morning. “You’re right, my apologies. So Verna, Sam, to what do I own this pleasure this morning?”

Sam piped up, “Verna wanted to see your classes, while I didn’t want to be trapped in that tower all day alone.”

He looked at Sam and placed a hand on her head, her hair was done up in a pony tail, again a hairstyle designed to emphasize her elegant and thin neck. He had to approve, she looked rather cute. Verna looked like Verna. Up to no good. She was dressed in armor as if expecting a war to break out.

Picking out a stone bench near the front for his seat he dropped the hooded cloak to mark his space and ignoring the two girls, he moved into the middle of the hall and he started familiarizing himself with Varngus’s sword. It had a long hilt, with some sort of leather that was easy to hold; it felt like it wouldn’t slip in his hands. Drawing the long blade, he examined the metal curiously. It was a strange blade. It was long. Very long. Nearly as long as the final practice blade he was using, at a little almost 50” from tip to pommel. The blade itself was made out of some sort of metal that looked foreign to Earth. It was shiny as if lacquered like the scale armor, the metal was a dark red in color, not rust but almost a blood color. He almost felt like he could feel some sort of resonance with the blade itself. The edge looked incomparably sharp, he had a feeling this blade could cut through almost everything, and had a weird desire to try. It also was heavy. For such an elegant looking blade it was far heavier than it looked, much heavier than the two handed blade he was working with.

So he worked through different guard stances and strikes, in the quiet dawn light. Due to the weight of the blade he was starting to work up a sweat so he removed his shirt and continued working through the different forms, trying to get faster and faster. He tried to visualize fighting kindred, because they were easily the pinnacle of sword fighting he had seen. It wasn’t successful. He felt too slow, too weak. After almost an hour of sword work he sheathed the blade with a troubled look on his face. He needed to get much stronger if he was going to be able to survive.

His chest was matted with sweat, he looked around and saw 15 or maybe 16 people from the gathering hall yesterday. All of them the new students. Most of them were staring at him like he was some sort of strange or mythical creature. The eyes a few of the girls were making him made him amend that analogy, to include the word “beautiful” between strange and mythical.

He glanced over to Sam and Verna, and noted that Sam was looking at him with stars in her eyes again. That look was so intense he felt a great discomfort with it, almost as if some great misunderstanding was growing up in her mind about him. It had to be a misunderstanding. He certainly wasn’t someone to be held in awe by anyone. The words Verna spoke to him yesterday ran through his head. He started wondering what Sam thought about him using her out of convenience. Loathing and guilt warred in him. It made so much sense at the time. His eyes drifted to Verna, she had that hungry predatory look in her eyes again and was whispering to Sam. Sam actually started giggling again after hearing whatever it was Verna was telling her.

He quickly put his shirt back on and sat down to wait for whatever this lecture was going to be about, Sam he would have to seriously think about. If they kept at this he'd create a child with her, if he had not already done so. The nagging guilt was only growing greater. He felt for the first time that what he was doing with Sam was going to get in the way of getting home. If they made a child how could he leave this place? Abandon a child? Abandon the child and mother of the child to this horrible world?

So he took a deep breath to clear his mind and wondered if he’d learn some magic today. He looked around the room one more time, and noticed one more person entering.