Zack had his hopeful expectations of the teacher being nice overturned within minutes of the class starting. Jab after jab was made at him, about how the poor orphan boy wouldn’t be able to understand what he was teaching. Unfortunately, he couldn’t even say anything since it was the truth.

Not because he was dumb or slow, he had just never been taught the preceding material.

“Now for those of you who have actually been taught math in the past, this should be an easy problem to solve.” The teacher droned on while making unsubtle digs at one of his students. “Now would anyone like to show us the proper steps involved?” He didn’t even bother to look around as his eye zeroed in on the student sitting quietly at the back. “How about you, would you be willing to show us?”

“Nope,” Zack replied with an unforced yawn. “You’re the one getting paid to teach, not me.”

The teacher flapped his mouth open and closed in shock, apparently never having had a student refuse or talk back before.

“Can we move on?” Tessa asked from her place at the front of the class.

There was a slight mute nod, and then the teacher turned back to the board and continued with the lesson.

Dutifully, Zack kept his head down, and simply copied everything that was said or written on the board for later. Every time he was asked to solve an equation, he would lean back and stare at the teacher without responding.

Eventually, the other students in the class began to speak up and deride the teacher. He was wasting their time by drawing attention to someone who clearly didn’t care! Finally, with a face flush with embarrassment, the teacher finally stopped picking on Zack and continued with the lesson.

The entire episode had shifted several of the student’s opinions of him. For the ones who had been on the fence about his existence, now they had tipped over and were against him. It seemed his classmates had lost sight of the larger picture.

It didn’t bother Zack overly much as he ignored them all and continued on with his day. It was no different from what he had been expecting or gone through before. If he was being honest with himself, then it stung a little that everyone was so quick to choose sides. It was a portion of student and teen life that he had never properly understood.

Why would you put so much energy into something that didn’t matter? Maybe it was just to him that it didn’t matter, and things were different for those who had money?

He had no idea, and no one seemed willing to explain it to him.

After math, Quinn came back into the room, a large rolled-up poster tucked under his arm. “Don’t go putting away your notebooks just yet. We are going to be discussing the basics of the portals and what you can expect on the other side. This is information that, while mostly common sense to a traveler, doesn’t get spoken of much by others. Taking notes is encouraged.”

He pinned the poster up across the front of the whiteboard and let it unfurl. A second poster dropped into his waiting hands, which he also quickly pinned by the side of the first. Monsters and beasts of different kinds were drawn on both. Next to each image was a simple description of their characteristics and elemental, if any, affinities.

Quin stepped to the side and frowned as he looked out over the class. “I doubt those of you in the back can properly see what is written. Either move your desks closer or come sit on the floor.”

After a moment of confusion, all the desks at the back moved a couple of feet forward. Which prompted everyone else to move as well.

“Now I need to give you all a quick warning about what we will be going over this week. Most of what you will be learning does not apply to the school’s portal, as it is a very isolated location on the other side. That said, outside of certain special portals like ours, this information will be particularly useful. I had some students complain last year that what I was teaching them didn’t apply to the portal when they went through.”

He sneered and smacked the posters. “Unfortunately for them, they didn’t listen and when they were brought to a different portal for training over the break, they died.” He smirked. “It was so sad, and I was very heartbroken over their extremely preventable deaths. So, don’t go making me all sad and teary-eyed by dying. Instead, just listen and learn like you are supposed to.”

“Shouldn’t you be sad, or something?” A student asked hesitantly.

“No, I’ve seen plenty of people die before. A lot of them were torn apart right in front of my eyes. The fact of the matter is that any traveler who attends an academy has a better chance of living longer than the ones who don’t. I see no reason to get all teary-eyed and sad over someone who squanders their chance to learn. I am a teacher, and while I do it to the best of my ability. I can not force any of you to learn.”

The class was silent as they digested his speech and the meaning it contained.

Quinn coughed and directed their attention to the posters. “I will cover in detail, what you will find inside the school’s portal before you enter it next week. This is just a broad overview of what can be found in them as a whole. You will find over your time as travelers that portals can change in different ways over time. They often seem to specialize in a certain kind of monster type or environment. All of that can change.”

He looked around the classroom and shook his head. “I was going to show you on a map, but there isn’t one in here. Anyway, I know of a portal where when you went through it, you would end up on a beautiful island paradise. Soft sand, blue skies, the works. There were monsters, of course, that kept it from being an actual paradise. The fish had teeth, the crabs and lobsters had shells that could deflect a sword blade and pincers that could crush a person. Then there were the beasts inside the trees.” He trailed off for a moment before refocusing on the class.

“The location of that portal changed gradually over time. During the course of about a year and a half, it went from being in the tree line to the beach, and then inside the water. No one can go through the portal now, as the other side deposits them deep inside the ocean. Our bodies can’t handle the sudden change in pressure.”

“It’s just one of the many things we don’t understand about the portals and how they work. They never seem to move location on our side, so why would they on the other? It ranks right up there with why a lot of our tech doesn’t work. Guns using chemical reactive agents don’t fire, and anything that uses mana-tech stops working after just a few minutes. They have to be repaired when they come back through. Trust me, over the years people smarter than you or I have tried every way imaginable to make it safer for us inside the portals.”

“None of it ever worked for long, and we always came back to the old standbys of weapons we had moved past. Bows, swords, martial arts, and for the lucky, indispensable few, magic.”

He scratched at the short hair on his head and gave the class a wry smile. “Sorry, I seem to be getting distracted a lot today. At least this is all useful information you would need to know in the future. One last random tidbit and then we’ll get back to the topic I actually meant to cover today.”

“How many of you know about the time limit inside the portals?”

Zack and a few others raised their hands.

“Zack, why don’t you explain it to everyone who doesn’t know what it is?”

“The time limit is how long any person or object they bring with them is allowed to stay inside the portal. After twelve hours no matter where they are inside, alive or dead, they and everything that came in with them is ejected from the portal.”

Quinn looked at him curiously. “That is exactly right, and a far better answer than I was expecting from anyone in this class. Very few people that aren’t travelers or working closely with them know or even remember two of the items you mentioned. All items, and the dead, regardless of location inside, get ejected after the time limit. It can make the area outside the portal very crowded and gory at times. As I’m sure you can all imagine.”