A Grim Fairy Tale

Chapter Sixty-Five

Vagatha spent most of that first night thinking long and hard about what Cherri had said about Anthony. About how he had literally no skills on how to run a kingdom or how to fight back or even how to survive. She felt sorry for him but at the same time she thought, that's not going to work if he's going to be traveling with her. She couldn't be the only one who knew how to fight back during this trip. Prince Charming was going to need a few lessons.

"Wake up!" She said shaking him at the crack of dawn.

"What?" He groaned, not yet fully awake.

"Get up! We've got work to do!"

"Give me five minutes."

"No, now! Get up now or I'm taking my dog and leaving you here to be eaten by bears!"

Anthony slowly rolled over on his side and very slowly lifted himself up off the ground. He never was a morning person and he didn't like morning people very much.

"Okay I'm up, I'm up." He said stretching. "Now what do you want?"

"Here's the deal." She told him. "Against my better judgement, I'm still going to help you. However I've got conditions."

"Which are?"

"If you're going to travel with me then you need to get over this 'Just do nothing when there's danger' attitude that you've been conditioned to have."

"Excuse me?"

"These woods are infested with wolves, bears, robbers, rapists, and God knows what else. And I am trying to find my sister and I can't do that if I'm dead, which means I need to extra measures to ensure nothing happens to me. That means my traveling companions, a.k.a you and your friend, have to know how to defend themselves and watch my back. If I have to do all the saving on my own then I'll eventually get killed. See my point?"

"Kind of. What exactly are you trying to say?"

"You don't know how to fight, do you? And don't bother denying it, your friend told me you're practically useless in combat and suffer from the flight part of fight or flight."

"Cherri!" Anthony snapped at her.

"Hey if I didn't tell her the truth then she would've just thought you were a jerk and ditched you." Cherri said.

"Right." Vagatha confirmed. "But don't worry, the fact that you are useless in combat is not your fault. You never had anyone teach you how to properly defend yourself and that is where I come in. I am going to teach you how to fight."

Anthony gave her a look. Was she serious?

"Now I know what you're thinking." Vagatha replied, reading his look. "But I am just a humble peasant girl, what could I possibly know about teaching combat? Well as I have mentioned before, I have lived in this forest all my life and with no man around since my father died, so naturally I had to train myself to fight and defend myself and my family. I also trained my sister. Granted she's not at my level but she knows what to do in a crisis and that's all I expect from you."

"And if I refuse to go long with these lessons of yours?"

"Then I'll leave you here. I told you, I have to find my sister and I can't risk getting killed by trying to constantly protect you. So do we have a deal?"

She offered him her hand.

Anthony could already feel the hand of his father striking him, if he ever knew that a son of his was allowing a woman to teach him something, he'd mercilessly punish the boy for being so "Disgraceful." But on the other hand, Anthony didn't really have much of a choice. It was either forsake his pride, if he even had any, or forsake his life. And truth be told, he didn't plan on dying anytime soon.