Knights of Avalon

Chapter 4

Gawain scoffed angrily, his red irises flashing. He knew that the five cadets with the highest marks were awarded the privilege of choosing the region they wanted to do their practical training in.

This privilege provided a much greater advantage than one would expect. Not only did the cadets have their pick of training regions, but they were also given the opportunity to oversee trainees in that region as their leader.

Calvert Caesar, the boy who had so recklessly swung his sword at Gawain, was a student whose marks consistently ranked in 6th place. For him to live up to what was expected of him by his family, he had to do whatever it took to claw his way into the top five.

The only option Calvert had was to bring down the top five people ranked above him. The problem was that most of the top-ranking students were the highborn offspring of nobles. Calvert was the eldest son of a knightly family on the decline, so there was no way he’d dare to sabotage any of them.

That singled out the common-born Gawain as the only cadet in the top five that Calvert could drag down.

How did this play out in the past…?

Gawain searched his memory for details on what happened after his injury. The injury had cost him his top five ranking along with his desired training region. Aegis, on the other hand, had received top marks in his exams, and he used his privileges to bring Gawain to the West for his practical training.

Gawain had to admit that, by going to the West with Aegis, he’d been able to train in relative comfort. But as much as he disliked the thought of rebuffing Aegis, he had no intention of going West with him this time. Unlike before, Gawain now had something to do.

“Weslon…”

Gawain leaned back in his bed and murmured Weslon’s name over and over again. Weslon had broken him out of prison.

But would Weslon have really planned all that on his own? Or was Aegis in on it as well? Even in Gawain’s final moments, he never did manage to find out why Weslon did what he did.

Things have to be different this time.

Miraculously, he had managed to return to the past instead of dying. However, there was no guarantee that he would get that lucky again. Gawain clenched his fists.

He threw himself into his bed and stretched his hand out toward the bottom of the top bunk above him. He focused on it while letting his mind wander. It was still unsettling for him to see how his hands were now smooth and devoid of the ghastly scars he had collected over his time in the North.

With all these thoughts running through his mind, he closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he lay down in a proper bed like this without any disturbances. Finally able to lower his defenses, Gawain quickly fell into a dreamless sleep.

***

It was sunset when Gawain woke. Roused by the sound of Aegis returning to the dorm room after his classes, he jolted upright without thinking.

“Ouch!”

Gawain smashed his head into the slats of the bunk above him with a dull thud. Clutching his sore forehead, he untangled himself from his sheets as Aegis turned to him, startled by the sudden noise.

“I thought you were sleeping! Are you okay?”

Gawain climbed out of bed and offered a slight nod as he looked out the window. The sun was dipping below the horizon behind another dormitory building. Something about the sight confirmed that he had truly returned to the past.

Aegis handed Gawain a thin notebook.

“These are my notes from today’s class. This stuff’s gonna be covered in the exam, so keep it handy.”

“Thanks. I’ll take a look and get this back to you.” Gawain tossed Aegis’ notebook onto his desk.

“So…what about dinner?” Aegis asked.

“I could eat.”

Gawain couldn’t very well ask Aegis to bring his dinner to him, no matter how injured he was. If word got out, he knew the other cadets would be in an uproar that a common pleb like him would dare to order Aegis around.

“Let me just change out of my uniform first.” Gawain gave a small self-deprecating smile as he looked down at his bedraggled uniform.

“Sure, I’ll wait.”

Aegis sat and waited while Gawain removed his uniform and changed into a more comfortable set of clothes. The two then headed down to the cafeteria in the basement of the dormitory for dinner. Several students began whispering excitedly when they caught sight of Gawain and his bandaged arm.

“Whoa, so he really did get injured! I thought it was just a rumor.”

“Who cares? This is gonna make the competition for this year’s exams that much easier.”

“I heard that Calvert did it on purpose…”

“Like, it was premeditated? No way. It was probably just an accident.”

“Yeah. I mean, these exams are crucial. It’s his own damn fault for getting hurt at a time like this.”

Clearly, news of Gawain’s injury had already spread like wildfire among his fellow classmates. When Aegis shot the gossips a dirty look, they quickly fell silent and returned to what they were doing as if nothing had happened.

Gawain and Aegis walked right past them and settled down at an empty table with their meals.

“Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that Weslon asked about you today,” Aegis said.

“Weslon… The guardian?”

“Yep.” Aegis nodded.

Weslon wasn’t a common name, but Gawain asked Aegis just to make sure.

The Military Academy was comprised of two sections. There were knights, who were able to use magic, and guardians, who were descended from the blood of dragons. While the two groups rarely interacted unless it was for special classes or training exercises, each group was still nonetheless aware of the other.

Weslon the Half-breed Dragon.

Weslon was known at the academy for supposedly being a guardian of an indeterminate dragon bloodline, thus earning him the derogatory moniker of “half-breed.”

Gawain had always thought that Weslon’s circumstances were not dissimilar to his own. After all, he had experienced his fair share of struggles as a lowborn knight of the commoner class.

Magic, the key qualification to become a knight, was typically a hereditary trait. Because of this, the presence or lack of magical abilities naturally came to symbolize the divide between the noble class and commoners, the haves and have-nots.

But Gawain’s magical prowess was formidable enough for him to become a knight in spite of his humble origins. Of course, this flew in the face of accepted convention. Some tried to grapple with this fact by speculating that he might be the bastard son of nobility, while most simply wrote him off as common-born scum.

As a result, the guardians steered clear of Weslon, and the knights steered clear of Gawain. It wasn’t just out of simple ignorance.

It’s because they don't trust us.

Both Weslon and Gawain’s mere existence posed a threat to the Britannian Empire’s deeply ingrained system of bloodline-based hierarchy and privilege. It was a fact that had eluded Gawain as a young cadet.

At the time, he had attributed the harassment from his peers to him being a commoner. In his childish desire to avoid further alienation, he had always gone out of his way to avoid Weslon, who he now realized was in the same boat he was.

Taking this into account, he couldn’t help but be surprised that Weslon had asked about him.

Gawain tried to recall if Weslon and Aegis would’ve ever interacted with each other prior to their practical training session, but he turned up short. It might’ve been nothing more than a passing incident. Was that why he couldn’t remember?

“What did he want?” Gawain questioned.

“Just to know if you were okay. I let him know that you were resting in your room, so he left, but I thought you might want to know.”

Gawain was still puzzled. “Why is Weslon worrying about me?”

“He was the first to step in when Calvert swung his sword at you, right?”

“Weslon was at the duel?”

“Wasn’t he? That’s what I heard…”

Aegis hadn’t been at the duel when it happened, and by the time he found out and got to the training grounds, everything was already over. In fact, it was only later that day when Aegis found out it was Weslon who carried Gawain to the infirmary.

Gawain put his fork down and brought his cup of water to his lips as he deliberated. “Ah, that’s right.”

As his memory belatedly came back to him in fragments, Gawain managed to piece together that it really was Weslon who brought him back to the infirmary that day. The only thing he couldn’t figure out was whether Weslon had visited Aegis afterward to inquire about him.

Aegis seemed satisfied with Gawain’s response. “Okay, good. I was worried I might’ve heard wrong.”

Gawain nodded intermittently in response to Aegis’ chatter. After another twenty minutes or so of idle conversation while they picked at their meals, the two returned to their dorm.

***

Gawain spread his textbook and Aegis’ notes out on his desk. To anyone else, he would’ve looked like the perfect picture of a cadet in the middle of an intense study session.

He flipped to a blank page in a writing pad. After writing “North” at the top in definitive letters, he tapped at the word with the end of his pen.

I need to go North. That much is clear.

Prior to his return to the past, Gawain had earned many nicknames and titles as a fully-fledged Knight of the Round Table. Among them, his most famed title was “Knight of the North,” and Gawain was reasonably sure that he would be able to claim this moniker again. There was a catch, though.

I didn’t do my practical training in the North.

In order to learn the motivations behind Weslon’s actions, as well as who it was that murdered the Knights of the Round Table and framed Gawain, Gawain was certain he had to go not West this time, but North.

It was the overwhelming fate of knights who ventured to the North to be killed and replaced in the span of a few short years. And it was precisely these uniquely treacherous conditions that had allowed Gawain to rise so quickly through the ranks in the first place.

If you could prove yourself in the North, if you could survive, success was all but guaranteed. And at any rate, Gawain was confident that he already knew most of the events that would unfold in the North going forward.

Since any amount of power and influence he could gain would be vital to his efforts to uncover the truth, it would be relatively easy for him to leverage his knowledge to set himself apart during his practical training period and move through the ranks even faster than before.

So that takes care of the subject of going North…

Gawain wrote another word on the page: “Demon.”

How the hell did they summon a demon?

The appearance of a demon in the heart of the Britannian Empire was no laughing matter. Gawain knew in his bones that the killer of the Round Table Knights and whoever framed him were one and the same. To pull off such an act, he knew that they had to have the backing of a rather substantial organization.

I need to find out how they did it.

He needed information. Gawain became swept up in his thoughts for some time before Aegis called out to him, breaking his spell.

“Gawain. Gawain.”

“Hm, yeah?”

“When are you going to sleep?” Aegis leaned his chair back on its rear legs and gestured at the window behind Gawain. It was already dark outside.

Gawain realized that it had gotten quite late. He had been so preoccupied that he failed to notice how much time had passed.

Aegis yawned as he cleaned his desk. Gawain rose from his seat and handed Aegis his notes.

“You’re already done with that? You can hang onto it longer if you need to.”

“I've gone through it. Don't worry.”

“Really? You sure?”