Knights of Avalon

Chapter 1

Kneeling low over the limestone floor, the man pressed the side of his head against the cold stonework as heavy footsteps thudded and echoed along the passageway. He listened intently until he heard the piercing screech of the rusty iron gate grating on its hinges. As the presence drew closer, the man in the cell slowly rose and picked himself up off the ground.

The entire underground dungeon was empty save for the lone man in his shackles. Chained and manacled hand and foot, he stared blankly through the darkness. His dank cell was only illuminated with brief moments of light from the flickering torches lining the corridor beyond the iron bars.

The prisoner was in a pitiful state. His blond locks, once flaxen and beautiful, were matted and stringy. His body was little more than a scarred mosaic of wounds and gashes from the hours of excruciating torture he endured during his lengthy imprisonment.

He moved slowly and gingerly, wincing whenever his wrists and ankles, which were raw and weeping with pus and blood, touched the inside of his heavy iron restraints.

The name of this condemned man was Gawain Kressian, and only a few short months ago, he had been a celebrated knight of the Britannian Empire. Now, he was nothing but a traitor to the realm.

He thought back to his trial.

“Gawain Kressian! You have been found guilty of summoning a most foul and loathsome demon to murder the noble knights of the Britannian Empire! The sentence for your crime is death!”

“Please, sir! There has to be some kind of mistake! I am innocent, I swear! I swear on my own name and the good name of Britannia that I have never summoned a demon or anything of the sort in my entire life!”

“Damn you and your lying tongue! Away with him!”

Where did it all go so horribly wrong?

The last thing Gawain remembered was arriving at the Castle of Britannia as he did every year to attend the annual gathering of the knights. The meeting was taking place as usual in an assembly hall that could only be entered by the Knights of the Round Table, and suddenly, a demon somehow bypassed the hall’s defensive barrier.

As a sign of good faith and cooperation, it was customary for the Knights of the Round Table to conduct their meeting after laying down their arms—a gesture which left them completely defenseless against the demon’s attacks.

The knights’ attempts to call for outside help were futile, as they soon discovered in their dying moments that some sort of magical interference had been put in place to cut off all communication.

The demon ruthlessly slaughtered all of the Knights of the Round Table save for one, Gawain, then vanished as if that had been its plan all along. Except for one other knight by the name of Aegis, whose absence that day helped him avoid his deadly fate, Gawain was the sole survivor of this terrible tragedy. He was naturally accused of being the culprit.

When a dagger favored by Gawain was discovered among the items believed to have been used to summon the demon, this only further cemented his accusers’ suspicions.

Gawain vehemently insisted that this was the work of a conspiracy, but his claims of innocence fell on deaf ears. Blinded by rage and grief at the senseless deaths of the Knights of the Round Table, the empire of Britannia refused to listen to reason. The people would only be consoled by paying Gawain back in kind.

Although quite some time had passed since he’d been sentenced to death by the military court, the day of Gawain’s execution was a mystery to him. He was locked away in a dungeon so deep in the bowels of the Britannic Castle that not even the passage of time seemed to exist.

He never knew when death would finally release him.

The sounds of the approaching footsteps stopped in front of Gawain’s cell, and he lifted his head to look beyond the iron bars. His bleary eyes, now all too used to the darkness, took a moment to make out the figure silhouetted by the light of the torches behind him.

“You…! What are you doing here?!”

When he recognized who the man was, Gawain was stunned. The man, however, remained impassive. His uniform was impeccably cut with minimal yet tasteful embroidered details, and his silvery hair, which fell past his shoulders, was tied neatly away from his face.

Silently taking this all in, Gawain was suddenly ashamed of his own wretched state.

“Weslon Arsellus…” Gawain muttered the man’s name under his breath, clenching his fists.

Weslon was the guardian of Aegis Jupiter, the only other surviving Knight of the Round Table.

In the empire of Britannia, there were knights capable of wielding magic and guardians who had the blood of dragons flowing in their veins. Guardians were able to harness the mana of knights to unleash the power of dragons.

The vast majority of guardians and knights were graduates of the Military Academy, which was where Weslon and Gawain had first met. At the time, there had been rumors that Gawain and Weslon might be paired up, but Weslon was eventually assigned to serve as Aegis’ guardian in the end.

“Have you come to take me to my death, or are you here to humiliate me with your pity?”

Gawain had barely finished his words before Weslon produced a key and unlocked the iron door to his cell. He strode inside and quickly went to work freeing Gawain’s limbs from his shackles.

While the key to Gawain’s cell would’ve been relatively easy to procure, his manacles had been specially forged, and unlocking them without the proper key was close to impossible.

However, when Weslon inserted a little key stamped with the imperial mark of Britannia, Gawain’s manacles swung open immediately.

“Now wait just one second—” Gawain started.

“Shh… Quiet.”

Weslon gently cupped his hand over Gawain’s mouth, his attention pricked by something unseen. His eyes darted towards the ceiling, where there was a small commotion of soldiers passing by above ground.

When the noise died down, Weslon took his hand off Gawain’s mouth. Every instinct in Gawain was screaming that something was amiss. Weslon produced a change of clean clothes that he had hidden inside his cloak.

“Hurry. You must change into these before we make our escape.”

“Are you out of your mind? This will get you killed! Or worse…!”

Aegis was the only remaining legitimate Knight of the Round Table left in the Britannian Empire, and Weslon was his guardian. If Weslon helped Gawain break out of prison, it could prove disastrous not only to Weslon, but to Aegis as well.

Weslon merely warned Gawain to lower his voice. As deep underground as they were, they weren’t so isolated that any suspicious noises wouldn’t go undetected by the outside guards.

“Would you rather stay and count down the minutes until you die?”

“No, but…”

“I'm going to help get you outside the castle grounds. I can't explain everything right now given the circumstances, but I know that you’re not a traitor. I know that you’re not the one who summoned a demon to massacre all those knights. So please… you must survive.”

As Weslon rose to his feet, Gawain felt his legs give out from under him. Weslon caught him before he hit the ground. Countless days of torture and mistreatment had left Gawain too weak and tired to walk.

Gawain braced himself against the wall as he struggled to stand up and bit down on his swollen, bloody lip.

“Survive…?”'

While the knights of Britannia were duty bound to preserve the peace of the empire and the continent, this was not a sentiment that was shared by everyone. Gawain felt deep in his bones that the massacre of the Knights of the Round Table was only the beginning of more dire times to come.

He could only guess as to how long these evil machinations had been in the works before they were put in motion. Gawain was sentenced to death in less than a month, with every procedure and process leading to that decision being enacted like a well-directed play.

Gawain knew better than anyone that he had been framed, but there was no way to stop it from happening. All he could do was grimly accept his fate—until now.

Gritting his teeth, Gawain got dressed into the change of clothes. He stifled his groans as stabs of pain shot through him whenever the fabric brushed against the raw skin of his wrists and ankles

Weslon eyed Gawain’s wrists with concern, and Gawain quickly pulled his sleeves over them and got them out of sight.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

In lieu of a response, Weslon draped a cloak around Gawain’s shoulders with a flourish. After pulling the massive hood down over Gawain’s face until it was completely hidden in shadows, Weslon grabbed Gawain’s forearm and led him out of the cell.

As they emerged from behind the bars, Gawain could see the bodies of the prison guards Weslon had dispatched littering the hallway. Contrary to Gawain’s expectations that they would head toward the surface, Weslon led him further down into the prison depths.

Upon reaching the innermost area of the dungeons, Weslon removed a brick at the bottom of a wall and pushed. Then, the wall slowly began to rotate, revealing a secret set of stairs.

“Hold on.”

Weslon went down the steps first, then offered his arm to Gawain. After hesitating for a split second, Gawain took his arm.

Originally built as a fortress, the Britannic Castle contained all sorts of mysterious trapdoors, pathways, and pits. This hidden staircase was doubtlessly one of them.

With only Weslon’s arm to guide him, Gawain blindly fumbled down the steps in darkness.

After what felt like an eternity of steps, the pair finally arrived at a long-forgotten waterway that was clearly no longer in use. Gawain was amazed. In all the time he’d spent at the castle of Britannia over the past ten years, he never knew that something like this existed beneath it.

As his vision acclimated to the inky darkness, he could faintly make out the outline of Weslon’s face. Weslon wore a conflicted expression, which was all too understandable given that if they were discovered, neither of them would live to see the light of day.

“Thank you.”

“Stop. There will be time for that once we get beyond the castle grounds.”

“My, aren’t you stern,” Gawain, who had been eager to relieve the undercurrent of tension flowing between them, murmured a little ruefully under his breath.

The two walked along the waterway for what seemed like miles until they finally reached a wall. Weslon promptly climbed up the ladder mounted there, and Gawain followed.

Weslon, being the first to reach the top, leaned over and took a firm hold of Gawain. Gawain felt himself being pulled upwards with ease. After reaching the top of the ladder, Gawain straightened up and realized he was bathed in moonlight.

The two men found themselves in the middle of the forest surrounding the Britannic Castle. They would still have to travel a little farther before they were completely beyond the castle grounds.

“Why are you helping me escape?” Gawain finally managed to force out the question that had been nagging at him since he was broken out of his cell.

Gawain had always asserted that he was innocent, but no one had believed him. It seemed unlikely that Weslon would try to help him escape after all this time.

Weslon was facing the direction of the castle outskirts when he turned and grasped Gawain by the shoulder. Gawain let out a little gasp when he felt Weslon’s fingers squeeze his bruised shoulder.

“As I’ve already said, it’s because you’re not the real culprit,” Weslon confirmed.

“Then does that mean you know who’s responsible?”

“That…”

Weslon clenched his jaw and went silent, avoiding Gawain’s questioning eyes. Gawain watched the man as his eyes darted this way and that, as if he was second guessing whether or not to say something. It made Gawain all the more certain that Weslon knew something.

The old Gawain would’ve brushed this aside, but he was no longer his old self. His recent trials had changed him, and he was determined to pursue any clue that might help him find the person who’d murdered the Knights of the Round Table and set him up to take the fall.

“Who’s responsible for this? Whatever you know, just tell me. I swear that no harm will come to you.”

“That’s… Wait.” Weslon’s face turned stony as he sensed a shift in the atmosphere.

Sensing the same, Gawain turned to face the same direction as Weslon.

Weslon threw a protective arm in front of Gawain. The two men remained silent and exchanged cautious glances as a faint light appeared in the distance.

They had been tracked down quicker than they expected.

Weslon unsheathed a dagger from his waist and handed it to Gawain, and Gawain tucked it away under his cloak.

Weslon leaned over slightly. “Run into the forest on my signal. I’ll follow you once I have an opening.”

Gawain nodded. The light in the distance grew larger and brighter, and Weslon gave Gawain’s shoulder a slight push. Gawain whipped around and bolted into the woods.

A group of soldiers appeared just as Gawain slipped away, and Weslon greeted them calmly.