Chapter 12: Three Weeks
That night, I did not sleep. I lay solitary on my bed, my eyes once again fixed upon my roof. Thoughts ran through my mind like train tracks, with each passing carriage of a freight train bringing a new question, a new scenario to dream, a new possibility.
Three weeks. Twenty one days, soon to become twenty. In three weeks time, my ultimate fate will be decided. Five years of undying service, and in three weeks, I would find out whether it would all be undone.
I wondered what Shield Knight must have been thinking. I wondered whether she knew that she would be facing me in three weeks; I wondered if she knew the stakes that were involved for my sake.
I turned in my bed. What was it about her that made me feel so…strange? Half of me could not wait to see her again, yet another half of me utterly feared her. The thought of potentially passing her in the corridors filled me with a toxic admixture of excitement and dread, enough to knock one's appetite clean away. Her beauty was becoming more and more undeniable to me; her face continued to appear in my visions when my eyes were closed. Her face etched within my head, her strength still etched upon my chest from where she'd struck me before. All this, and I'd barely had a full conversation with her yet.
And every time I thought of her, I thought of Black Knight.
Black Knight was my closest ally for years, yet in these last couple of weeks, I have never felt more distant. Watching him go toe to toe with Shield Knight as I lay crumpled on the floor awakened new feelings within me, new opinions about the man I once called my closest ally. We have barely exchanged words since that moment, and I imagine now he would be in no mood to exchange any more words with me for a long time.
Was it their camaraderie, Black Knight and Shield Knight? Was it the mutual respect they must have had for each other due to their duel? Was it the fact that I could no longer hold solid claim to being the Order of the Shovel's prime knight?
Well, that last fact certainly isn't true anymore. I was lost at sea, lying in my bed, feeling the cold chill of the night creep under my duvet. None of my co-knights would consider me a fellow knight after my display.
I turned around in bed once again, the restlessness getting to me. I thought about the oaths I took when I first joined the Order of the Shovel: to act in the best interests of peace and justice at all times. Was it true that I could have just lost interest? Perhaps my loss to Shield Knight finally signalled a deep seated, subconscious desire to perhaps move on to new talents? Perhaps I was not born to wield a shovel as I had thought before? Maybe my true calling lay elsewhere?
And then, just as I thought of such a thing, she returns to my mind. Shield knight. The image of her standing there, loose wisps of hair falling from her helmet and waving in the wind. Her strong, armoured figure, her graceful poise and determined stance.
I was becoming enamoured with this woman. And the worst part was that the Pridemoor Ball was in four weeks..
It had been in my mind to perhaps entertain the thought of taking Shield Knight onto the floor for a dance. Yes, the moment I heard there was a ball happening in Pridemoor Keep, Shield Knight appeared to me as a potential candidate to do the honours with. I didn't even think anything romantic of it. But now, the thought filled me with that same mix of dread and excitement as it does whenever the prospect of her presence comes to me. And dancing with her? More fear than ever fills my chest just even speaking the words.
Perhaps one day, all these things will come true for me. Perhaps I can defeat Shield Knight. Perhaps i can take her onto the floor. And perhaps I can finally make sense of all these strange feelings and events. To blow the dust from the situation and make clear all that has remained unclear to this point.
The next day, I trained.
Hard.
