The Royal Knight Academy

Chapter 10: The Royal Knight Academy

To my surprise, when the door opened there were five people standing and talking to each other, not noticing that I was there. They were also all boys. I stopped in the doorway so I wouldn't bring attention to myself. They were all wearing suits of armor with their helmets off, except for one. He had a short dark gray beard with hair on his head that looked like it was balding. He was wearing fancy clothes with shiny shoes, like he was in charge. He looked much older than the rest of the boys in the room and the others looked not much older than me. One had dark brown hair, brown eyes, and was the tallest. He looked like he was showing off, bragging to the others. The second boy had reddish hair, blue eyes, and glasses. He seemed to be arguing with the dark brown haired boy. The next one had light brown hair with green eyes and was the shortest out of the bunch, not much taller than me. He was biting his nails nervously, not talking to the others, looking like he was trying to stay out of the conversation. The last boy in the room had black hair and hazel eyes. Out of all of the people in the room, he seemed like he could be the nicest from what I could see, trying to calm down the two in the argument.

As I intently watched what was going on, I must have leaned on the open door because it moved, hitting the back of the wall with a, "Bang." The noise made everybody stop what they were doing and turn to me. Their sharp stares gazed at me with confusion, as if I didn't belong there (Which technically I didn't). "What should I do?" I wondered as I just stood there as still as a statue in shock. So I gathered up all the courage I could muster and asked in a deep voice, "Ahem. Hello? Is this where all of the newly signed up knights are supposed to be?" After I said that, I entered the room fully. Inside, the room looked like it was designed for training exercises. There were bows and arrows with practice targets, smoke bombs, swords, daggers, and wooden sticks with a chain and a spiked ball at the end of it. There were also shields with our kingdom name and crest on the front, signifying who was fighting if a battle was going on.

As I looked around the training room, the older man came up close to me with an irritated scowl and asked, "Who are you?"

"Uhh, I'm Leo," I lied in a deep voice. "Sorry if I'm late."

(I decided that I would need to talk to them in a deeper voice from now on, so they wouldn't know that I was a girl.)

"Leo," he said curiously. "Are you here to join the rest of us?"

"Yes," I responded nervously, afraid of what he was going to say next.

"Well I guess there's room for one more. Welcome to the team."

I nodded, relieved.

"Allow me to introduce myself and the others," he said as he shook my hand. "I am Duke Williams, the Supiria Royal Knight Trainer. I have been training new knights around here for over thirty years. Since you are late, you have missed introductions and getting to know each other, so let me introduce everyone." He let go of my hand as he started to tell me about the others.

"This is Owen." He pointed to the guy with dark brown hair. "He's nineteen. Strong, confident, and likes to show off around here, bragging about his many lady fans and his strength."

Then he muttered to the others, chuckling, "Lucky for us there are no actual ladies around here or we would be spending all of our time needing to save them."

Owen, the boy with red hair, and the boy with light brown hair, laughed at his snide comment. As he spoke, anger rose in my blood, but I acted normal and chuckled with them so I wouldn't give myself away. Those people didn't realize that there was someone under the helmet that they were clearly offending.

Owen came up to me, looking down at me as he said, "You better not do anything that makes me look bad."

I could tell that he was not going to make it easy to train with him. As he went back to where he was standing, the trainer pointed to the boy with red hair and introduced him.

"This is Blake and he is seventeen-"

"Actually, I'm eighteen," Blake suddenly interrupted. "It was my birthday two days ago."

"He's the brains of the new recruits. Intelligent, responsible, and honest." Then Duke murmured to me, "Though sometimes he thinks he's smarter than everyone else."

"Oh boy," I thought to myself as Duke moved on to the next person.

"This is Elijah and he's seventeen," he said, pointing to the boy with light brown hair. "He is very considerate, but can be a bit reserved, so give him some time."

I looked at Elijah, hoping he would say something. I waved at him, but he just looked down as he held his hands together.

"Okay," Duke said. "Let's move on."

He pointed at the last boy with black hair. "This is Xavier and he's eighteen. He is really helpful around here, very cooperative and is great at getting people to work together."

Xavier walked up to me, shaking my hand.

"Nice to meet you Leo."

"You too," I answered.

"I think you are going to be a great knight someday," he said, making me suddenly feel flustered. He then whispered jokingly, "Maybe even better than Owen."

"Hey!" Owen shouted. "I heard that! Don't think I can't hear you!"

We all laughed. But as they laughed, I couldn't help but think about Xavier's comment. "Did he really mean that?" I wondered, suddenly feeling guilty for not being able to be honest about my true identity.

Once Duke had introduced me to all of the knights in training, he announced, "Okay, now that all of you have settled in, it's time to pick your weapon of choice to start training." He looked at me again. "I see you already have one, pointing at my sword. You can go put your bag and helmet over there." He pointed to a corner in the room where the other boys' gear was.

I put my bag in the corner, but didn't take my helmet off.

"Aren't you going to take off your helmet?" Owen asked me.

"No. I like to practice with it on."

"Come on, just take it off," he insisted.

Owen walked over to me and started trying to pull my helmet off. I pulled back, afraid of what was going to happen if he succeeded.

"Stop it!" I angrily shouted, trying to get away from him before he could pry off my helmet. "Get off of me!"

Blake suddenly said, "If you keep pulling on that helmet, you'll hurt him-!" but at that moment I finally managed to pull away from Owen.

Unfortunately as I did, I wasn't paying attention and bumped into something. Looking up to see what I crashed into, I saw Xavier's slightly worried hazel eyes staring at my shielded face, unaware of who was behind it.

"You okay?" he kindly asked me, as I was frozen in the moment.

I immediately snapped out of it, stood back up and took a step away from him.

"Yes, definitely..." I answered, flustered. "I'm fine."