A new dawn rose upon the Kingdom of Northern Utah. Golden sunlight touched the grazing fields, bustling villages, and rustic medieval towns of the nation. The residents of the kingdom moved to their daily duties as the sun crawled further across the sky in its westward journey, just like the ancestors of old. It was a kingdom built upon honest work and community, always working together and never alone. That’s how it had been since the ancients first settled in the Salt Lake Valley.

  The rays of sunlight even made their way through the battlements and mighty stone walls of Northridge Knight Academy, through a particular open window which held the likes of a dorm room for two young squires. The room itself was not anything fancy. Banners of legendary knights from jousting tournaments were hung upon the wall. A notebook filled with research about various mythical creatures was left open on a desk beside a quill and bottle of ink. Letters were piled up on a corner of the opposite desk, signed by various family members and acquaintances from Sunset Village, where the two squires had grown up. If only they had their mothers now to remind them to wake up in time for their classes.

  Simon Wilson was the one who happened to wake up first. It was unlike him to sleep-in to such an hour of daylight, but he had spent the prior night foolishly jotting down the latest information he learned from studying unicorns into his notebook. With his arms raised above his head and a satisfying popping of the back, Simon glanced through his messy red hair into the sunlight beaming through the window, before realizing what hour it was.

  “Ethan, wake up,” said Simon in a panic. “It’s morning!”

  The brown-bearded squire in the opposite bed began to sit up, glancing out into the sunny day with annoyance on his lips.

  “Oh,” began Ethan. “That’s not good.”

  The two squires pulled on their school equipment as quickly as they could before swinging open their door into the boys’ tower and clopping down the spiral stairs as quickly as they could without falling over themselves.

  “Didn’t we get new schedules?” asked Ethan.

  “If I recall correctly, we have Horseback right now,” Simon informed him.

  “Then they’ve probably left for the riding grounds without us,” said Ethan.

  “Yeah, but if we don’t at least try to catch up then it's one big trip to you-know-where with you-know-who,” said Simon.

  Dashing through corridors and hallways of the castle, the duo reached the ground floor and raced into the courtyard. Following the turn of the outer wall, they made their way into the stables where their horses stood tied up, a chestnut and black bay, and snorted at their late riders as they entered.

  “Yeah I know, I know,” Simon told the chestnut horse conversationally.

  Mounting their horses and freeing them from their securings in the stables, they rode out at full throttle into the nearby woodlands. Weaving through the trees and brush was easy, but Ethan’s horse had to push itself a bit harder to keep up with Simon’s. Eventually they reached a clearing and a high-fenced area, their classmates inside practiced jumping over sequences of smaller fences.

  Both of the squires rode up towards the gate to the riding grounds where their instructor stood, her arms crossed and brow furrowed.

  “You’re late,” announced the instructor. “Wilson, Smith.”

  “Instructor Harwood, I can explain,” began Simon. He was cut off.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” said Instructor Harwood. “You made those horses ride like they were pulling chariots of fire, it ain’t fair you don’t have to do the same.”

  “But-”

  “Ten laps around the riding grounds, full sprint,” said Instructor Harwood. “Then you can join the rest of the class as normal.”

  It was pointless to try and argue unless they wanted more laps. They got started before realizing how large the riding grounds actually were, and both immediately wanted to give up and go home. A few creatures in the woods almost brought Simon to a stop, but Ethan kept him on task with a not-so-subtle elbow to the side in passing. By the end of it, Simon’s hair was damp with sweat and Ethan was catching his breath, leaning against the wooden fence of the grounds.

  “Simon,” said Ethan in a pant. “I hope a pyromancer burns that stupid journal of yours.”

  “Like it would be a problem if you didn’t base your sleep schedule on me waking you up every morning,” Simon argued back.

  Harwood opened the gates to the riding grounds for them to practice throughout the last twenty-minutes that remained of the class. Considering the time given to them, they made it through the class pretty well. Simon managed to get a few good fence leaps out of his chestnut horse before the class was over, while Ethan accomplished one or two himself. They fell back riding side-by-side as the class returned to the stables at the sound of the school bell.

  “Last time we’re ever late to this class again, am I right?” said Simon.

  “Yeah,” said Ethan. “You remember what we have next?”

  “No,” said Simon. He reached back into his satchel and pulled out a scroll, unrolling it and giving it a quick glance before tucking it away again. “Dueling. Followed by literature, luncheon, and survival.”

  “I hate literature,” expressed Ethan.

  “At least we have dueling right before it,” said Simon. It was a well-known fact that Ethan loved that class.

  “Yeah,” said Ethan. “Would have been nicer if it were after literature instead of before. Sitting at a desk taking notes for two hours straight makes me restless.”

  “I hear you,” said Simon.

  Reentering the stables, the class tied up their horses in their stalls, some brushing their manes and tails before leaving to start toward their next class. Simon and Ethan graciously took their time walking the short distance there was between the stables and the training grounds. Another class was still using them, so the two stepped into the equipment room to grab their weapons and idle somewhere that wasn’t the corridor.

  Ethan gripped the leather hilt of his longsword as he sheathed it on his belt, deciding he was going to try fighting with his left hand today. He went and sat down on a wooden bench next to Simon, who was holding his oar-like swallow at his side. The room was quiet, and after the rush of the morning they had just come from, time felt like a slow crawl. Morninglight shone through the cracks in the wall, painting yellow lines of light across the room.

  “Do you remember when we used to duel back in Sunset?” asked Simon. “With Damion and Lucian, and Logan, and Severin?”

  “Sure do,” said Ethan.

  “They were always wood back then. I don’t think I ever touched a real steel sword until I was at least twelve. But even though they weren’t real weapons, we always fought like they were,” said Simon. There was a note of melancholy on his breath. “I just find myself wondering where they all ended up, after all this time, y’know?”

  Ethan drew a breath inward. “Probably not much different than us if you think about it.”

  “I guess,” said Simon. “Mage schools can’t be that different from Knight ones.”

  After a brief pause, Simon posed a question. “Do you ever sometimes wish you had magic?”

  “Not really,” said Ethan. “Swords are a lot more straightforward. With magic you have to remember all those fancy words and hand stuff.”

  “Yeah…” said Simon as he drifted off into thought.

  Squires from the class before them began coming in and out of the room, dropping off their equipment for the next class to use. Ethan’s younger brother, David, was among them, but they paid each other no mind. Soon the other students in their class began filing in, grabbing weapons of all shapes and sizes. Simon and Ethan stepped out onto the sparring courts with the crowd, now donning bronze training armor. They were greeted by the face of Instructor Fresques who began dividing the class into dueling pairs for the day. Pray as they might have, Simon and Ethan hadn’t been placed together in prior classes, and nor would today be the exception.

  Placed with a girl whose blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, Simon twirled his swallow around a few times in suspense. Ethan stood opposite of a curly haired guy with a similar bulky build to himself, and drew his longsword. Even though they wore protective armor, it was common for squires to get injured during this class, which was why the hospital wing was straight down the corridor. The worst injury either of the two had suffered was when Simon suffered a harsh blow to the chest two years ago and was found to have two broken ribs. Since then, he remembered to always hold his weapon close to his torso.

  Fresques eventually gave the okay to begin their duels. Ethan immediately charged forward toward his opponent, being careful to evade a downward strike from a morningstar in a quick dodge. His longsword struck the boy’s side with enough driving force behind it to knock the kid on his side, crashing to the ground. Quickly recovering, the boy got back to his feet and began swinging the mace wildly and horizontal to discourage Ethan from coming closer. Just as another blur of the morningstar rushed past him, Ethan moved forward and dropped down, kicking his opponent’s feet out from under him. Placing his boot on the boy’s arm, longsword raised to his throat, Ethan had emerged victorious.

  “Amature,” he scoffed as the boy left the dueling court.

  Simon wasn’t so fortunate. Whereas he had no problem on horseback, dueling on only two feet was a bit more complicated, no matter how many times Ethan tried to explain the art to him. Jumping out of the way of the blonde’s halberd by only an inch, he tried to take the opening to strike with his swallow. He was met with a heavy kick backwards, stumbling back against the fence of the dueling court. A quick jab into his breastplate forced the wind out of him, making him slide down against the fence onto the stone ground.

  The class cycled through a few more rounds of dueling, some of which Simon almost didn’t lose, before the bell rang once more and class was dismissed. Literature was in a classroom on the other side of the castle, so the duo sped off in its direction.

  “We’ve been going here for, what? Six years?” said Simon as they began walking up a staircase.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Five,” corrected Ethan.

  “And I still can’t get the hang of that class,” complained Simon.

  “You just need to be more dedicated to it,” said Ethan.

  Fortunately, literature was a class that required no physical skill to pass. Being the start of the last term of the year, Professor Ellsworth only had them begin reading a collection of poetry, and were told to have the collection finished in time for the next class. Simon didn’t mind it all too much. A Catch in the Wild Roses was rather captivating with its elaborate sense of describing nature. Ethan, however, could not have been more perturbed by the class or the assignment. He hated reading material where the author kept beating around the bush, refusing to just say that someone woke up and took a bath. All the filler words that were meant to make it sound more complicated than necessary made Ethan want to throw his copy out the open window.

  Closing his book, Simon took a glance out that same window. He saw trees with birds upon them, fluttering about from one to another. Fluffy clouds drifted across the high-hung sky, pushed by the wind in whichever direction it wanted to float. It was such a lovely day, and yet everyone had to spend most of it inside. He knew it was spring fever fueling his wanderlust, but Simon couldn’t help but daydream of what it must be like to travel the roads on lovely days like today.

  Such a daydream was broken when a note slid onto his desk, reading ‘This class is so boring.’

  Simon dabbed his quill in a bottle of ink and scribbled down ‘It wouldn’t be if you read the thing and got it over with’ and discreetly passed it back to Ethan.

  ‘Easy for you to say, I bet you already finished it.’

  ‘For your information I am only on page 34 of 86.’

  ‘Could you just write my summary for me, please?’

  ‘No’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You just need to be more dedicated to it.’

  ‘?’

  Simon would have written another response, but the small piece of parchment they were using had run out of room for more entries, so he just crumpled it up and forced it into his satchel.

  It wasn’t much longer until the bell chimed once more and the class filed out of the literature hallway and into the dining hall. Simon and Ethan took their seats across from each other and began eating away at chicken drumsticks, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. School luncheons were usually this or something similar, mostly depending on what time of year it was. Buttered corn was widely regarded as the best they offered, but it was only served in autumn.

  “You done with that?” asked Ethan, gesturing to Simon's drumstick which had already been stripped of most of its meat.

  “Eat away,” said Simon, moving the drumstick to Ethan’s platter.

  Simon let his gaze scan the dining hall briefly. It was packed full of at least a thousand squires all having their own conversations and contributing to the roar of the crowd. Only a few faces stuck out, those being of the more popular students and a few people he had known from the village. He locked eyes with the blonde-haired girl from the dueling class earlier for half-a-second, before darting his eyes away.

  “Not the best chicken I’ve ever had,” began Ethan. “But considering that it’s coming from this place, it’s pretty darn good.”

  “Those and the taters,” added Simon.

  “Eh, the potatoes were only okay,” said Ethan. “Could have done better with some gravy.”

  “Agreed,” said Simon. Just the thought of gravy brought back memories of his grandfather's biscuits.

  Tossing the remains of their meal in the garbage as they stepped out from the dining hall, the pair of squires wandered into the halls, heading in no particular direction. They rounded a corner into a corridor where a small huddle of students were playing marbles off to the side. Passing a portrait of some old man they probably learned about in their history lessons, Simon reached back into his satchel and reviewed the scroll from earlier.

  “Last but not least, Survival,” he said.

  “There are worse ways to end the day,” said Ethan.

  “Let’s not jynx anything,” warned Simon. “We are getting a new teacher for that class.”

  “Really? What happened to Professor Kennington?”

  “Quit,” Simon guessed.

  “Then who’s the new professor?”

  “Apparently their name is Professor Banks.”

  “Huh,” finished Ethan.

  As the period for luncheon rolled to its end, Simon and Ethan made their way up to the third floor and into the Survival hallway. It was the furthest door down and was labeled with their new teacher’s name in fancy lettering above the door. Both made their way to the far back corner seats that were available for claim just as the school bell rang. Other students began entering the classroom, each a little cautious wondering if they entered the right room or not. No professor had entered the room yet, but it wasn’t unlikely that he was just late returning from his own lunch. The second bell rang, signifying the beginning of the class period, and the entire class sat in suspense of their mystery teacher, eyes fixated on the door. A minute passed… then five minutes… ten minutes… and before long it had been twenty-four minutes since the bell had rung to start class. Most students had resorted to taking naps or flipping open a book, while others just sat patiently, wondering what the deal was.

  It was at that moment that Professor Banks entered the room.

  He was an older-looking fellow. He wore a fancy-looking old suit, the coat torn in places with not-very-subtle patchwork, and a yellowing white shirt beneath it. Although he was not entirely bald, you could still see the shimmer of the candlelight above on the top of his head. Small round glasses sat perched on the bridge of his short nose, and his expression remained neutral.

  “Sorry for the delay,” the professor said as he let the door close behind him. “I was attending an important meeting.”

  A few students in front of Simon and Ethan murmured something about an excuse for falling asleep in his office.

  “What do we have in this class, Seniors?”

  “Juniors,” corrected a female student on the front row.

  “Ah, never worked with Juniors before,” said Professor Banks. “They always stick me with the Sophomores. Fresh minds for molding, but a bit too underdeveloped to have any form of complex thought. Let’s see if that changes with a year’s time. Everyone, get out of your seats, we’re heading outside.”

  The class confusingly rose to a collective murmur and hesitantly began following their professor out the door and down to the ground floor. Ethan and Simon exchanged glances as they stepped out into the field on the northern side of the castle where the forest stood not much further away. Banks never stopped, and the entire class followed him as he got nearer and nearer to the forest. Soon they fell under its shade.

  The sun had abandoned its light morning glow for a deep orange that shone twilight through the trees. Everyone in the class became more and more confused as Banks led them deeper into the forest, taking random turns and pushing into more dense parts of the woods. Normally, this was an area that students were not allowed into without an adult’s permission, and while Banks clearly qualified for being an adult, he was still new. None of the students fully trusted that this old man knew where he was taking them, but none also had the desire to speak up.

  Finally, they reached a small pond in the middle of the forest. The castle was not visible anymore, not even over the tops of the trees surrounding them. Mountains rose high in the distance, and the clouds above were still lazily floating along the breeze. Professor Banks stopped at the edge of the pond and turned to face the class. They all turned their attention to him, waiting for some answer as to why they had come all the way out here.

  “I’m afraid I may have gotten us lost,” said Banks.

  Everyone sighed with disappointment. This new professor was just some crazy old man after all.

  “There wouldn’t happen to be any of you who remember the way we got here?” asked the professor.

  No one spoke up.

  “Well this is quite the conundrum,” said the professor. “I suppose we’ll just have to wait out here until somebody from the castle comes looking for us.”

  The class began to rise to murmurs again, tones of concern and worry prevalent. Ethan and Simon checked their satchels to find that they hadn’t miraculously kept some kind of snack packed away for situations such as this. Banks moved to sit on a boulder, removed his glasses, and began rubbing his temples.

  “Why can’t we just wander the woods?” blurted out someone from the masses. “Surely we’ll find our way back eventually.”

  “Aye,” said another. “But let’s not forget that we’re out here at sunset, which means that now is the perfect time of day for creatures of the night to start waking up. Creatures that wouldn’t mind taking a good bite out of you. Things like werewolves and giant spiders.”

  “Right you would be,” said Professor Banks.

  “If we wait long enough, we might be able to use the stars to guide us back to the castle,” said a female student.

  “I’m not waiting out here in the bloody woods for the stars to show up!” roared a rather angry male student. “Banks here is clearly just messing with us.”

  A small group of students in the crowd made sounds of agreement. Banks looked up at the boy who had called him out from where he was sitting. A grave look was on his face, but it was hard to pinpoint what exactly it was for.

  “I wish I was, Mr…”

  “Kent,” said the student.

  “Well Mr. Kent. You surely have your wits about you far more than I do,” began Professor Banks, standing up from the boulder. “Perhaps you have some idea of how we might be able to get back to our beds tonight?”

  Kent shifted uncomfortably under the gaze of Banks, and backed away, hanging his head slightly lower.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Banks.

  “You guys are all so stupid,” said a female voice in the audience.

  “What was that?” asked Banks.

  “It’s sunset!” blurted out the girl in a tone that made whatever she was about to say sound obvious. “With the mountains always being to our east, and the sun setting in the west, we already have half the compass laid out for us. And since we left the school through the north doors, we can assume that we are standing on the south side of this pond. So if we just head straight south, we’ll get back to the school safe and sound.”

  Everyone was a bit confused as to what she said, because she blurted it out pretty fast. Banks clearly understood what she said, though, and let her guide the rest of the class back through the woods. In only a minute or two, the battlements of the northern tower became visible through the leaves of the trees, and they had returned to the knights academy. A brief walk back up the stairs and into the classroom and they were all happily back in their seats, and Banks had himself a very pleased expression.

  “Everyone, a round of applause for Miss Victoria!” said Banks.

  The brunette girl who had guided them out of the woods blushed as the class gave a polite clap, quieting down at the raise of Banks’s hand.

  Simon turned to Ethan in a whisper. “We both knew he was faking it for the lesson, right?”

  “Yeah, it was kind of obvious,” Ethan whispered back.

  “My dear class,” began Professor Banks. “I understand that I am joining you all late in this school day, and in this year as well. But I ask you to please bear with me as I do what I can to teach you what you need to know if you are going to become a knight. Because if I know anything, it’s that horses, swords, and books can only get you as far as the mind is willing to take them. With that, class is dismissed early. Good evening and good night!”

  Everyone seemed to be in a rather upbeat mood as they left the classroom. Sure, Banks was a bit obvious with how he staged the whole thing to teach them about finding directions without a compass, but the energy he had in the lesson seemed to rub off. Ethan and Simon made their way to their room in the boys’ tower, still a bit cheery from the way their day had come to an end.

  “I like him,” said Simon.

  “He’s not bad,” said Ethan.

  “Definitely better than Kennington, right?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Simon plopped down at his desk, where his notebook, quill, and bottle of ink awaited him from the night prior. Ethan sat down on his bed and gave Simon a side-eye, before falling backwards onto his feather pillow. Simon reluctantly closed the journal and put away the quill and ink in their respective drawer, turning to his bed as well.

  “Well,” said Simon with a sleepy sigh. “It has been a day.”

  “Sure has,” said Ethan.

  “Not a good or bad day, but a day nonetheless.”

  “Just promise me one thing, before I conk out for the night” said Ethan.

  “That would be?”

  Ethan turned over in his bed. “Don’t sleep in again tomorrow.”